UC-NRLF 


SB    301    7Mb 


GIFT   OF 
MICHAEL  REE.SE 


i; 


American 


EDITED  BY 


JOHN  T.  MORSE,  JR. 


THOMAS  HART  BENTON 


BT 


THEODORE  EOOSEVELT 


FOURTH   EDITION. 


W      orr» 

UNIVERSITY 


YORK 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 
&  Camfcribge 

1889 


Copyright,  1886, 
Bl  THEODORE  ROOSEVELT. 

All  rights  reserved. 


The  Riverside  Press,  Cambridge  t 
Electrotyped  and  Printed  by  II.  0.  Houghton  &  Co. 


CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  I. 

PAG3 

THE  YOUNG  WEST          . 1 

CHAPTER  II. 
BENTON'S  EARLY  LIFE  AND  ENTRY  INTO  THE  SENATE    23 

CHAPTER  HI. 
EARLY  YEARS  IN  THE  SENATE      .....    47 

CHAPTER  IV. 
THE  ELECTION  OP  JACKSON,  AND  THE  SPOILS  SYSTEM    69 

CHAPTER  V. 

THE  STRUGGLE  WITH  THE  NULLIFIERS        .        .        .88 

CHAPTER  VI. 
JACKSON  AND  BENTON  MAKE  WAR  ON  THE  BANK        .  114 

CHAPTER  VII. 
THE  DISTRIBUTION  OF  THE  SURPLUS    .        .        .        .143 

CHAPTER   VIII. 
THE  SLAVE  QUESTION  APPEARS  IN  POLITICS       .        .  157 


vi  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER   IX. 

PAGE 

THE  CHILDREN'S  TEETH  ARE  SET  ON  EDGE        .        .  184 

CHAPTER  X. 
LAST  DAYS  OF  THE  JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY      .        .  209 

CHAPTER  XL 
THE  PRESIDENT  WITHOUT  A  PARTY  .  .  .  .237 

CHAPTER  XII. 
BOUNDARY  TROUBLES  WITH  ENGLAND  ....  260 

CHAPTER  XIII. 

THE  ABOLITIONISTS  DANCE  TO  THE  SLAVE  BARONS' 
PIPING 290 

CHAPTER  XIV. 
SLAVERY  IN  THE  NEW  TERRITORIES  .  .  .  .317 

CHAPTER  XV. 

THE  LOSING  FIGHT  .  341 


THOMAS  HART  BEKTOK 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE    YOUNG    WEST. 

EVEN  before  the  end  of  the  Revolutionary 
War  the  movement  had  begun  which  was  to 
change  in  form  a  straggling  chain  of  sea-board 
republics  into  a  mighty  continental  nation,  the 
great  bulk  of  whose  people  would  live  to  the 
westward  of  the  Appalachian  Mountains.  The 
hardy  and  restless  backwoodsmen,  dwelling 
along  the  eastern  slopes  of  the  Alleghanies, 
were  already  crossing  the  mountain-crests  and 
hewing  their  way  into  the  vast,  sombre  forests 
of  the  Mississippi  basin ;  and  for  the  first  time 
English-speaking  communities  were  growing 
up  along  waters  whose  outlet  was  into  the  Gulf 
of  Mexico  and  not  into  the  Atlantic  Ocean. 
Among  these  communities  Kentucky  and  Ten 
nessee  were  the  earliest  to  form  themselves 
into  states ;  and  around  them,  as  a  nucleus, 
other  states  of  the  woodland  and  the  prairie 
were  rapidly  developed,  until,  by  the  close  of 
the  second  decade  in  the  present  century,  the 


4  THOMAS  HART  BENT  ON. 

the  most  sustained  energy  of  action.  We  see 
them,  moreover,  in  many  places,  even  across  to 
the  Pacific  coast  and  down  to  the  Rio  Grande. 
For  after  thronging  through  the  gaps  and  passes 
of  the  Appalachians,  and  penetrating  the  forest 
region  to  the  outskirts  of  the  treeless  country 
beyond,  the  whilom  mountaineers  and  woods 
men,  the  wielders  of  the  axe  and  rifle,  then 
streamed  off  far  to  the  West  and  South  and 
even  to  the  Northwest,  their  lumbering,  white- 
topped  wagons  being,  even  to  the  present  mo 
ment,  a  familiar  sight  to  those  who  travel  over 
the  prairies  and  the  great  plains  ;  while  it  is 
their  descendants  who,  in  the  saddle  instead  of 
afoot,  and  with  rope  and  revolver  instead  of 
axe  and  rifle,  now  form  the  bulk  of  the  reckless 
horsemen  who  spend  their  lives  in  guarding  the 
wandering  cattle  herds  that  graze  over  the  vast, 
arid  plains  of  the  "  Far  West." 

The  method  of  settlement  of  these  states  of 
the  Mississippi  valley  had  nothing  whatever  in 
common  with  the  way  in  which  California  and 
the  Australian  colonies  were  suddenly  filled  up 
by  the  promiscuous  overflow  of  a  civilized  popu 
lation,  which  had  practically  no  fear  of  any 
resistance  from  the  stunted  and  scanty  native 
races.  It  was  far  more  closely  akin  to  the  tribe 
movements  of  the  Germanic  peoples  in  time 
past ;  to  that  movement,  for  example,  by  which 


THE   YOUNG   WEST.  5 

the  Juttish  and  Low  Dutch  sea-thieves  on  the 
coast  of  Britain  worked  their  way  inland  at  the 
cost  of  the  Cymric  Celts.  The  early  settlers  of 
the  territory  lying  immediately  west  of  the  Al- 
leghanies  were  all  of  the  same  kind ;  they  were 
in  search  of  homes,  not  of  riches,  and  their  ac 
tions  were  planned  accordingly,  except  in  so  far 
as  they  were  influenced  by  mere  restless  love  of 
adventure  and  excitement.  Individuals  and  sin 
gle  families,  of  course,  often  started  off  by  them 
selves  ;  but  for  the  most  part  the  men  moved  in 
bands,  with  their  wives  and  their  children,  their 
cattle  and  their  few  household  goods  ;  each  set 
tler  being  from  the  necessity  of  the  case  also  a 
fighter,  ready,  and  often  forced,  to  do  desperate 
battle  in  defense  of  himself  and  his  family. 
Where  such  a  band  or  little  party  settled,  there 
would  gradually  grow  up  a  village  or  small 
town  ;  for  instance,  where  those  renowned  pio 
neers  and  heroes  of  the  backwoods,  Boone  and 
Harrod,  first  formed  permanent  settlements  af 
ter  they  had  moved  into  Kentucky,  now  stand 
the  towns  of  Boonsboro  and  Harrodsburg. 

The  country  whither  these  settlers  went  was 
not  one  into  which  timid  men  would  willingly 
venture,  and  the  founders  of  the  West  were  per 
force  men  of  stern  stuff,  who  from  the  very 
beginning  formed  a  most  warlike  race.  It  is 
impossible  to  understand  aright  the  social  and 


6  THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

political  life  of  the  section,  unless  we  keep 
prominently  before  our  minds  that  it  derived 
its  distinguishing  traits  largely  from  the  ex 
tremely  militant  character  acquired  by  all  the 
early  settlers  during  the  long  drawn  out  war 
fare  in  which  the  first  two  generations  were 
engaged.  The  land  was  already  held  by  power 
ful  Indian  tribes  and  confederacies,  who  waged 
war  after  war,  of  the  most  ferocious  and  bloody 
character,  against  the  men  of  the  border,  in 
the  effort  to  avert  their  inevitable  doom,  or  at 
least  to  stem  for  the  time  being  the  invasion 
of  the  swelling  tide  of  white  settlement.  At 
the  present  time,  when  an  Indian  uprising  is 
a  matter  chiefly  of  annoyance,  and  dangerous 
only  to  scattered,  outlying  settlers,  it  is  difficult 
to  realize  the  formidable  nature  of  the  savage 
Indian  wars  waged  at  the  end  of  the  last  and 
the  beginning  of  the  present  centuries.  The 
red  nations  were  then  really  redoubtable  ene 
mies,  able  to  send  into  the  field  thousands  of 
well-armed  warriors,  whose  ferocious  bravery 
and  skill  rendered  them  quite  as  formidable 
antagonists  as  trained  European  soldiers  would 
have  been.  Warfare  with  them  did  not  affect 
merely  outlying  farms  or  hamlets ;  it  meant 
a  complete  stoppage  of  the  white  movement 
westward,  and  great  and  imminent  danger 
even  to  the  large  communities  already  in  ex- 


THE    YOUNG   WEST.  7 

istence ;  a  state  of  things  which  would  have 
to  continue  until  the  armies  raised  among  the 
pioneers  were  able,  in  fair  shock  of  battle,  to 
shatter  the  strength  of  their  red  foes.  The  vic 
tories  of  Wayne  and  Harrison  were  conditions 
precedent  to  the  opening  of  the  Ohio  valley; 
Kentucky  was  won  by  a  hundred  nameless  and 
bloody  fights,  whose  heroes,  like  Shelby  and 
Sevier,  afterwards  rose  to  prominent  rank  in 
civil  life  ;  and  it  was  only  after  a  hard-fought 
campaign  and  slaughtering  victories  that  the 
Tennesseeans  were  able  to  break  the  power  of 
the  great  Creek  confederacy,  which  was  thrust 
in  between  them  and  what  were  at  that  time 
the  French  and  Spanish  lands  lying  to  the 
south  and  southwest. 

The  founders  of  our  Western  States  were 
valiant  warriors  as  well  as  hardy  pioneers,  and 
from  the  very  first  their  fighting  was  not  con 
fined  to  uncivilized  foes.  It  was  they  who  at 
King's  Mountain  slew  gallant  Ferguson,  and 
completely  destroyed  his  little  army ;  it  was 
from  their  ranks  that  most  of  Morgan's  men 
were  recruited,  when  that  grizzled  old  bush- 
fighter  smote  Tarleton  so  roughly  at  the  bat 
tle  of  the  Cowpens.  These  two  blows  crippled 
Cornwallis,  and  were  among  the  chief  causes  of 
his  final  overthrow.  At  last,  during  the  War 
of  1812,  there  was  played  out  the  final  act  in 


8  THOMAS   HART  BEN  TON. 

the  military  drama  of  which  the  West  had  been 
the  stage  during  the  lifetime  of  a  generation. 
For  this  war  had  a  twofold  aspect :  on  the 
sea-board  it  was  regarded  as  a  contest  for  the 
rights  of  our  sailors  and  as  a  revolt  against 
Great  Britain's  domineering  insolence ;  west  of 
the  mountains,  on  the  other  hand,  it  was  sim 
ply  a  renewal  on  a  large  scale  of  the  Indian 
struggles,  all  the  red- skinned  peoples  joining 
together  in  a  great  and  last  effort  to  keep  the 
lands  which  were  being  wrested  from  them ; 
and  there  Great  Britain's  part  was  chiefly  that 
of  ally  to  the  savages,  helping  them  with  her 
gold  and  with  her  well-drilled  mercenary  troops. 
The  battle  of  the  Thames  is  memorable  rather 
because  of  the  defeat  and  death  of  Tecumseh, 
than  because  of  the  flight  of  Proctor  and  the 
capture  of  his  British  regulars ;  and  for  the 
opening  of  the  Southwest  the  ferocious  fight  at 
the  Horseshoe  Bend  was  almost  as  important  as 
the  far  more  famous  conflict  of  New  Orleans. 

The  War  of  1812  brought  out  conspicuously 
the  solidarity  of  interest  in  the  West.  The 
people  there  were  then  all  pretty  much  of  the 
same  blood ;  and  they  made  common  cause 
against  outsiders  in  the  military  field  exactly  as 
afterwards  they  for  some  time  acted  together 
politically.  Further  eastward,  on  the  Niagara 
frontier,  the  fighting  was  done  by  the  troops  of 


THE    YOUNG    WEST.  9 

New  York  and  New  England,  unassisted  by  the 
Southern  States ;  and  in  turn  the  latter  had 
to  shift  for  themselves  when  Washington  was 
burned  and  Baltimore  menaced.  It  was  far 
otherwise  in  the  regions  lying  beyond  the 
Appalachians.  Throughout  all  the  fighting  in 
the  Northwest,  where  Ohio  was  the  state  most 
menaced,  the  troops  of  Kentucky  formed  the 
bulk  of  the  American  army,  and  it  was  the 
charge  of  their  mounted  riflemen  which  at  a 
blow  won  the  battle  of  the  Thames.  Again, 
on  that  famous  January  morning,  when  it 
seemed  as  if  the  fair  Creole  city  was  already  in 
Packenham's  grasp,  it  was  the  wild  soldiery  of 
Tennessee  who,  lolling  behind  their  mud  breast 
works,  peered  out  through  the  lifting  fog  at 
the  scarlet  array  of  the  English  veterans,  as  the 
latter,  fresh  from  their  long  and  unbroken  se 
ries  of  victories  over  the  best  troops  of  Europe, 
advanced,  for  the  first  time,  to  meet  defeat. 

This  solidarity  of  interest  and  feeling  on  the 
part  of  the  trims- Appalachian  communities  is  a 
factor  often  not  taken  into  account  in  relating 
the  political  history  of  the  early  part  of  this 
century ;  most  modern  writers  (who  keep  for 
getting  that  the  question  or  slavery  was  then 
not  one  tenth  as  absorbing  as  it  afterwards  be- 
became)  apparently  deeming  that  the  line  of 
demarkation  between  North  and  South  was  at 


10  THOMAS   HART  BENTON. 

that  period,  as  it  has  since  in  reality  become, 
as  strongly  defined  west  of  the  mountains  as 
east  of  them.  That  such  was  not  the  case  was 
due  to  several  different  causes.  The  first  com 
ers  into  Tennessee  and  Kentucky  belonged  to 
the  class  of  so-called  poor  whites,  who  owned 
few  or  no  slaves,  and  who  were  far  less  section- 
ally  southern  in  their  feelings  than  were  the 
rich  planters  of  the  low,  alluvial  plains  towards 
the  coast  of  the  Atlantic ;  and  though  a  slave- 
owning  population  quickly  followed  the  first 
pioneers,  yet  the  latter  had  imprinted  a  stamp 
on  the  character  of  the  two  states  which  was 
never  wholly  effaced,  —  as  witness  the  tens  of 
thousands  of  soldiers  which  both,  even  the  more 
southern  of  the  two,  furnished  to  the  Union 
army  in  the  Civil  War. 

If  this  immigration  made  Kentucky  and  Ten 
nessee,  and  afterwards  Missouri,  less  distinct 
ively  Southern  in  character  than  the  South 
Atlantic  States,  it  at  the  same  time,  by  furnish 
ing  the  first  and  for  some  time  the  most  numer 
ous  element  in  the  population  of  the  states 
north  of  the  Ohio,  made  the  latter  less  charac 
teristically  Northern  than  was  the  case  with 
those  lying  east  of  them.  Up  to  1810  Indiana 
kept  petitioning  Congress  to  allow  slavery 
within  her  borders ;  Illinois,  in  the  early  days, 
felt  as  hostile  towards  Massachusetts  as  did 


THE    YOUNG   WEST.  11 

Missouri.  Moreover,  at  first  the  Southern 
States  west  of  the  mountains  greatly  outweighed 
the  Northern,  both  in  numbers  and  importance. 
Thus  several  things  came  about.  In  the  first 
place,  all  the  communities  across  the  Allegha- 
nies  originally  felt  themselves  to  be  closely  knit 
together  by  ties  of  blood,  sentiment,  and  inter 
est;  they  felt  that  they  were,  taking  them 
altogether,  Western  as  opposed  to  Eastern.  In 
the  next  place,  they  were  at  first  Southern 
rather  than  Northern  in  their  feeling.  But,  in 
the  third  place,  they  were  by  no  means  so  ex 
tremely  Southern  as  were  the  Southern  Atlantic 
States.  This  was  the  way  in  which  they  looked 
at  themselves ;  and  this  was  the  way  in  which 
at  that  time  others  looked  at  them.  In  our 
day  Kentucky  is  regarded  politically  as  being 
simply  an  integral  portion  of  the  solid  South ; 
but  the  greatest  of  her  sons,  Clay,  was  known 
to  his  own  generation,  not  as  a  Southern  states 
man,  but  as  "  Harry  of  the  West."  Of  the  two 
presidents,  Harrison  and  Taylor,  whom  the 
Whigs  elected,  one  lived  in  Ohio  and  one  in 
Louisiana;  but  both  were  chosen  simply  as 
Western  men,  and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  both 
were  born  in  Virginia.  Andrew  Jackson's  vic 
tory  over  Adams  was  in  some  slight  sense  a 
triumph  of  the  South  over  the  North,  but  it 
was  far  more  a  triumph  of  the  West  over  the 


12  THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

East.  Webster's  famous  sneer  at  old  Zachary 
Taylor  was  aimed  at  him  as  a  "frontier 
colonel;"  in  other  words,  though  Taylor  had 
a  large  plantation  in  Louisiana,  Webster,  and 
many  others  besides,  looked  upon  him  as  the 
champion  of  the  rough  democracy  of  the  West 
rather  than  as  the  representative  of  the  polished 
slave-holders  of  the  South. 

Thus,  during  the  first  part  of  this  century,  the 
term  "  Western  "  was  as  applicable  to  the  states 
lying  south  of  the  Ohio  as  to  those  lying  north 
of  it.  Moreover,  at  first  the  Central,  or,  as  they 
were  more  usually  termed,  the  Border  States, 
were  more  populous  and  influential  than  were 
those  on  either  side  of  them,  and  so  largely 
shaped  the  general  tone  of  Western  feeling. 
While  the  voters  in  these  states,  whether  Whigs 
or  Democrats,  accepted  as  their  leaders  men 
like  Clay  in  Kentucky,  Benton  in  Missouri,  and 
Andrew  Jackson  in  Tennessee,  it  could  be 
taken  for  granted  that  on  the  whole  they  felt 
for  the  South  against  the  North,  but  much 
more  for  the  West  against  the  East,  and  most 
strongly  of  all  for  the  Union  as  against  any 
section  whatsoever.  Many  influences  came 
together  to  start  and  keep  alive  this  feeling; 
but  one,  more  potent  than  all  the  others  com 
bined,  was  working  steadily,  and  with  ever- 
increasing  power,  against  it;  and  when  slavery 


THE    YOUNG    WEST.  13 

finally  brought  about  a  break  between  the 
Northern  and  Southern  States  of  the  West  as 
complete  as  that  in  the  East,  then  the  Demo 
crats  of  the  stamp  of  Jackson  and  Benton  dis 
appeared  as  completely  from  public  life  as  did 
the  Whigs  of  the  stamp  of  Clay. 

Benton's  long  political  career  can  never  be 
thoroughly  understood  unless  it  is  kept  in  mind 
that  he  was  primarily  a  Western  and  not  a 
Southern  statesman;  and  it  owes  its  especial 
interest  to  the  fact  that  during  its  continuance 
the  West  first  rose  to  power,  acting  as  a  unit, 
and  to  the  further  fact  that  it  was  brought  to  a 
close  by  the  same  causes  which  soon  afterwards 
broke  up  the  West  exactly  as  the  East  was  al 
ready  broken.  Benton  was  not  one  of  the  few 
statesmen  who  have  left  the  indelible  marks  of 
their  own  individuality  upon  our  history ;  but 
he  was,  perhaps,  the  most  typical  representative 
of  the  statesmanship  of  the  Middle  West  at  the 
time  when  the  latter  gave  the  tone  to  the  polit 
ical  thought  of  the  entire  Mississippi  valley. 
The  political  school  which  he  represented  came 
to  its  fullest  development  in  the  so-called  Border 
States  of  Kentucky,  Tennessee,  and  Missouri, 
and  swayed  the  destinies  of  the  West  so  long  as 
the  states  to  the  north  as  well  as  the  states  to 
the  south  were  content  to  accept  the  leadership 
of  those  that  lay  between  them.  It  came  to  an 


14  THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

end  and  disappeared  from  sight  when  people 
north  of  the  Ohio  at  last  set  up  their  own 
standard,  and  when,  after  some  hesitation,  the 
Border  States  threw  in  their  lot  with  the  other 
side  and  concluded  to  follow  the  Southern  com 
munities,  which  they  had  hitherto  led.  Benton 
was  one  of  those  public  men  who  formulate  and 
express,  rather  than  shape,  the  thought  of  the 
people  who  stand  behind  them  and  whom  they 
represent.  A  man  of  strong  intellect  and  keen 
energy,  he  was  for  many  years  the  foremost 
representative  of  at  least  one  phase  of  that 
thought ;  being,  also,  a  man  of  high  principle 
and  determined  courage,  when  a  younger  gener 
ation  had  grown  up  and  the  bent  of  the  thought 
had  changed,  he  declined  to  change  with  it, 
bravely  accepting  political  defeat  as  the  alter 
native,  and  going  down  without  flinching  a 
hair's  breadth  from  the  ground  on  which  he 
had  always  stood. 

To  understand  his  public  actions  as  well  as 
his  political  ideas  and  principles  it  is,  of  course, 
necessary  to  know  at  least  a  little  of  the  men 
among  whom  he  lived  and  from  whom  he  sprang : 
the  men  who  were  the  first  of  our  people  to 
press  out  beyond  the  limits  of  the  thirteen  old 
states ;  who  filled  Kentucky,  Tennessee,  Arkan 
sas,  and  Missouri,  and  who  for  so  long  a  time 
were  the  dominant  class  all  through  the  West, 


THE    YOUNG    WEST.  15 

until,  at  last,  the  flood  of  Northeastern  immi 
gration  completely  swamped  their  influence 
north  of  the  Ohio,  while  along  the  Gulf  coast 
the  political  control  slipped  from  their  hands 
into  the  grasp  of  the  great  planter  class. 

The  wood  -  choppers,  game -hunters,  and  In 
dian-fighters,  who  first  came  over  the  moun 
tains,  were  only  the  forerunners  of  the  more 
regular  settlers  who  followed  them ;  but  these 
last  had  much  the  same  attributes  as  their 
predecessors.  For  many  years  after  the  set 
tlements  were  firmly  rooted,  the  life  of  the 
settlers  was  still  subject  to  all  the  perils  of 
the  wilderness.  Above  all,  the  constant  war 
fare  in  which  they  were  engaged  for  nearly 
thirty-five  years,  and  which  culminated  in  the 
battle  of  New  Orleans,  left  a  deep  and  lasting 
imprint  on  their  character.  Their  incessant 
wars  were  waged  almost  wholly  by  the  settlers 
themselves,  with  comparatively  little  help  from 
the  federal  government,  and  with  hardly  any 
regular  troops  as  allies.  A  backwoods  levy, 
whether  raised  to  meet  an  Indian  inroad  or  to 
march  against  the  disciplined  armies  of  the 
British,  was  merely  a  force  of  volunteers,  made 
up  from  among  the  full-grown  male  settlers, 
who  were  induced  to  join  either  from  motives  of 
patriotism,  or  from  love  of  adventure,  or  because 
they  felt  that  their  homes  and  belongings  were 


16  THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

in  danger  from  which  they  could  only  extricate 
them  by  their  own  prowess.  Every  settler  thus 
became  more  or  less  of  a  soldier,  was  always 
expert  with  the  rifle,  and  was  taught  to  rely 
upon  his  own  skill  and  courage  for  his  protec 
tion.  But  the  military  service  in  which  he  was 
from  time  to  time  engaged  was  of  such  a  law 
less  kind,  and  was  carried  on  with  such  utter 
absence  of  discipline,  that  it  did  not  accustom 
him  in  the  least  to  habits  of  self-command,  or 
render  him  inclined  to  brook  the  exercise  of 
authority  by  an  outsider ;  so  that  the  Western 
people  grew  up  with  warlike  traditions  and 
habits  of  thought,  accustomed  to  give  free  rein 
to  their  passions,  and  to  take  into  their  own 
hands  the  avenging  of  real  or  supposed  wrongs, 
but  without  any  of  the  love  for  order  and  for 
acting  in  concert  with  their  fellows  which  char 
acterize  those  who  have  seen  service  in  regular 
armies.  On  the  contrary,  the  chief  effect  of 
this  long- continued  and  harassing  Border  war 
fare  was  to  make  more  marked  the  sullen  and 
almost  defiant  self-reliance  of  the  pioneer,  and 
to  develop  his  peculiarly  American  spirit  of  in 
dividual  self-sufficiency,  his  impatience  of  out 
side  interference  or  control,  to  a  degree  not 
known  elsewhere,  even  on  this  continent.  It 
also  gave  a  distinct  military  cast  to  his  way  of 
looking  at  territory  which  did  not  belong  to 


THE    YOUNG    WEST.  17 

him.  He  stood  where  he  was  because  he  was  a 
conqueror;  he  had  wrested  his  land  by  force 
from  its  rightful  Indian  lords  ;  he  fully  intended 
to  repeat  the  same  feat  as  soon  as  he  should 
reach  the  Spanish  lands  lying  to  the  west  and 
southwest ;  he  would  have  done  so  in  the  case 
of  French  Louisiana  if  it  had  not  been  that  the 
latter  was  purchased,  and  was  thus  saved  from 
being  taken  by  force  of  arms.  This  belligerent, 
or,  more  properly  speaking,  piratical  way  of 
looking  at  neighboring  territory,  was  very  char 
acteristic  of  the  West,  and  was  at  the  root  of 
the  doctrine  of  '*  manifest  destiny." 

All  the  early  settlers,  and  most  of  those  who 
came  after  them,  were  poor,  living  narrow  lives 
fraught  with  great  hardship,  and  varying  be 
tween  toil  and  half-aimless  roving ;  even  when 
the  conditions  of  their  life  became  easier  it 
was  some  time  before  the  influence  of  their 
old  existence  ceased  to  make  itself  felt  in  their 
way  of  looking  at  things.  The  first  pioneers 
were,  it  is  true,  soon  followed  by  great  slave 
owners  ;  and  by  degrees  there  grew  up  a  clan  of 
large  landed  proprietors  and  stock-raisers,  akin 
to  the  planter  caste  which  was  so  all-powerful 
along  the  coast;  but  it  was  never  relatively 
either  so  large  or  so  influential  as  the  latter, 
and  was  not  separated  from  the  rest  of  the 
white  population  by  anything  like  so  wide  a 


18  THOMAS  HART  BEN  TON. 

gap  as  that  which,  in  the  Southern  Atlantic  and 
Gulf  States,  marked  the  difference  between  the 
rich  growers  of  cotton,  rice,  and  sugarvand  the 
squalid  "poor  whites"  or  "crackers." 

The  people  of  the  Border  States  were  thus 
mainly  composed  of  small  land -owners,  scat 
tered  throughout  the  country ;  they  tilled  their 
small  farms  for  themselves,  were  hewers  of 
their  own  wood,  and  drawers  of  their  own 
water,  and  for  generations  remained  accustomed 
to  and  skillful  in  the  use  of  the  rifle.  The  pio 
neers  of  the  Middle  West  were  not  dwellers  in 
towns  ;  they  kept  to  the  open  country,  where 
each  man  could  shift  for  himself  without  help 
or  hindrance  from  his  neighbors,  scorning  the 
irksome  restraints  and  the  lack  of  individual 
freedom  of  city  life.  They  built  but  few  cities 
of  any  size;  the  only  two  really  important  ones 
of  whose  inhabitants  they  formed  any  consider 
able  part,  St.  Louis  and  New  Orleans,  were 
both  founded  by  the  French  long  before  our 
people  came  across  the  mountains  into  the  Mis 
sissippi  valley.  Their  life  was  essentially  a 
country  life,  alike  for  the  rich  and  for  the  bulk 
of  the  population.  The  few  raw  frontier  towns 
and  squalid,  straggling  villages  were  neither 
seats  of  superior  culture  nor  yet  centres  for  the 
distribution  of  educated  thought,  as  in  the 
North.  Large  tracts  of  land  remained  always 


THE   YOUNG    WEST.  19 

populated  by  a  class  of  backwoodsmen  differ 
ing  but  little  from  the  first  comers.  Such  was 
the  district  from  which  grand,  simple  old  Davy 
Crockett  went  to  Washington  as  a  Whig  con 
gressman  ;  and  perhaps  there  was  never  a 
quainter  figure  in  our  national  legislature  than 
that  of  the  grim  old  rifleman,  who  shares  with 
Daniel  Boone  the  honor  of  standing  foremost 
in  the  list  of  our  mighty  hunters.  Crockett 
and  his  kind  had  little  in  common  with  the 
men  who  ruled  supreme  in  the  politics  of  most 
of  the  Southern  States  ;  and  even  at  this  day 
many  of  their  descendants  in  the  wooded 
mountain  land  are  Republicans;  for  when  the 
Middle  States  had  lost  the  control  of  the  West, 
and  when  those  who  had  hitherto  followed  such 
leaders  as  Jackson,  Clay,  and  Benton,  drifted 
with  the  tide  that  set  so  strongly  to  the  South, 
it  was  only  the  men  of  the  type  of  dogged, 
stubborn  old  Crockett  who  dared  to  make  head 
against  it.  But,  indeed,  one  of  the  character 
istics  of  the  people  with  whom  we  are  dealing 
was  the  slowness  and  suspicion  with  which  they 
received  a  new  idea,  and  the  tenacity  with  which 
they  clung  to  one  that  they  had  at  last  adopted. 
They  were  above  all  a  people  of  strong,  vi 
rile  character,  certain  to  make  their  weight 
felt  either  for  good  or  for  evil.  They  had 
iv»any  virtues  which  can  fairly  be  called  great, 


20  THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

and  their  faults  were  equally  strongly  marked. 
They  were  not  a  thrifty  people,  nor  one  given 
to  long-sustained,  drudging  work ;  there  were 
not  then,  nor  are  there  now,  to  be  found  in  this 
land  such  comfortable,  prosperous  homes  and 
farms  as  those  which  dot  all  the  country  where 
dwell  the  men  of  Northeastern  stock.  They 
were  not,  as  a  rule,  even  ordinarily  well  edu 
cated  ;  the  public  school  formed  no  such  im 
portant  feature  in  their  life  as  it  did  in  the  life 
of  their  fellow  -  citizens  farther  north.  They 
had  narrow,  bitter  prejudices  and  dislikes  ;  the 
hard  and  dangerous  lives  they  had  led  had  run 
their  character  into  a  stern  and  almost  forbid 
ding  mould.  They  valued  personal  prowess 
very  highly,  and  respected  no  man  who  did  not 
possess  the  strongest  capacity  for  self-help,  and 
who  could  not  shift  for  himself  in  any  danger. 
They  felt  an  intense,  although  perhaps  ignorant, 
pride  in  nnd  love  for  their  country,  and  looked 
upon  all  the  lands  hemming  in  the  United 
States  as  territory  which  they  or  their  children 
should  some  day  inherit ;  for  they  were  a  race 
of  masterful  spirit,  and  accustomed  to  regard 
with  easy  tolerance  any  but  the  most  flagrant 
violations  of  law.  They  prized  highly  such 
qualities  as  courage,  loyalty,  truth,  and  patriot 
ism,  but  they  were,  as  a  whole,  poor,  and  not 
over-scrupulous  of  the  rights  of  others,  nor  yet 


THE    YOUNG    WEST.  21 

with  the  nicest  sense  of  money  obligations ;  so 
that  the  history  of  their  state  legislation  affect 
ing  the  rights  of  debtor  and  creditor,  whether 
public  or  private,  in  hard  times,  is  not  pleasant 
reading  for  an  American  who  is  proud  of  his 
country.  Their  passions,  once  roused,  were  in 
tense,  and  if  they  really  wished  anything  they 
worked  for  it  with  indomitable  persistency. 
There  was  little  that  was  soft  or  outwardly 
attractive  in  their  character:  it  was  sjtern,  rude, 
and  hard,  like  the  lives  they  led ;  but  it  was  the 
character  of  those  who  were  every  inch  men, 
and  who  were  Americans  through  to  the  very 
heart's  core. 

In  their  private  lives  their  lawless  and  arro 
gant  freedom  and  lack  of  self-restraint  produced 
much  gross  licentiousness  and  barbarous  cru 
elty  ;  and  every  little  frontier  community  could 
tell  its  story  of  animal  savagery  as  regards  the 
home  relations  of  certain  of  its  members.  Yet 
in  spite  of  this  they,  as  a  whole,  felt  the  family 
ties  strongly,  and  in  the  main  had  quite  a  high 
standard  of  private  morality.  Many  of  them, 
at  any  rate,  were,  according  to  their  lights, 
deeply  and  sincerely  religious ;  though  even 
their  religion  showed  their  strong,  coarse- 
fibred,  narrow  natures.  Episcopalian  ism  was 
the  creed  of  the  rich  slave-owner,  who  dwelt 
along  the  sea-board;  but  the  Western  settlers 
belonged  to  some  one  or  other  of  the  divisions 


22  THOMAS   HART  BENTON. 

of  the  great  Methodist  and  Baptist  churches. 
They  were  as  savagely  in  earnest  about  this 
as  about  everything  else ;  meekness,  mildness, 
jroad  liberality,  and  gentle  tolerance  of  differ 
ence  in  religious  views  were  not  virtues  they 
appreciated.  They  were  always  ready  to  do 
battle  for  their  faith,  and,  indeed,  had  to  do  it, 
as  it  was  quite  a  common  amusement  for  the 
wilder  and  more  lawless  members  of  the  com 
munity  to  try  to  break  up  by  force  the  great 
camp -meetings,  which  formed  so  conspicuous 
a  feature  in  the  social  and  religious  life  of  the 
country.  For  even  irreligion  took  the  form  of 
active  rebellion  against  God,  rather  than  dis 
belief  in  his  existence. 

Physically  they  were,  and  are,  especially  in 
Kentucky,  the  finest  members  of  our  race ;  an 
examination  of  the  statistics  relating  to  the 
volunteers  in  the  Civil  War  shows  that  the  na 
tives  of  no  other  state,  and  the  men  from  no 
foreign  country  whatsoever,  came  up  to  them 
in  bodily  development. 

Such  a  people,  in  choosing  men  to  represent 
them  in  the  national  councils,  would  naturally 
pay  small  heed  to  refined,  graceful,  and  culti 
vated  statesmanship ;  their  allegiance  would  be 
given  to  men  of  abounding  vitality,  of  rugged 
intellect,  and  of  indomitable  will.  No  better 
or  more  characteristic  possessor  of  these  attri 
butes  could  be  imagined  than  Thomas  Benton. 


CHAPTER  II. 

BENTON'S  EAKLY  LIFE  AND  ENTRY  INTO  THE 

SENATE. 

THOMAS  HART  BENTON  was  born  on  March 
14,  1782,  near  Hillsborougb,  in  Orange  County, 
North  Carolina,  —  the  same  state  that  fifteen 
years  before,  almost  to  a  day,  had  seen  the 
birth  of  the  great  political  chief  whose  most 
prominent  supporter  he  in  after  life  became. 
Benton,  however,  came  of  good  colonial  stock; 
and  his  early  surroundings  were  not  character 
ized  by  the  squalid  poverty  that  marked  Jack 
son's,  though  the  difference  in  the  social  con 
dition  of  the  two  families  was  of  small  conse 
quence  on  the  frontier,  where  caste  was,  and 
is,  almost  unknown,  and  social  equality  is  not 
a  mere  figure  of  speech  —  particularly  it  was  not 
so  at  that  time  in  the  Southwest,  where  there 
were  no  servants,  except  black  slaves,  and 
where  even  what  in  the  North  would  be  called 
"hired  help"  was  almost  an  unknown  quan 
tity. 

Benton's  father,  who  was  a  lawyer  in  good 
standing  at  the  North  Carolina  bar,  died  when 


24  THOMAS  HART  BENT  ON. 

the  boy  was  very  young,  leaving  him  to  be 
brought  up  by  his  Virginian  mother.  She  was 
a  woman  of  force,  and,  for  her  time,  of  much 
education.  She  herself  began  the  training  of 
her  son's  mind,  studying  with  him  history  and 
biography,  while  he  also,  of  course,  had  access 
to  his  father's  law  library.  The  home  in  which 
he  was  brought  up  was,  for  that  time  and  for 
that  part  of  the  country,  straightlaced ;  his 
mother,  though  a  Virginian,  had  many  traits 
which  belonged  rather  to  the  descendants  of 
the  Puritans,  and  possessed  both  their  strength 
of  character  and  their  austerely  religions  spirit. 
Although  living  in  a  roistering  age,  among  a 
class  peculiarly  given  to  all  the  coarser  kinds 
of  pleasure,  and  especially  to  drink  and  every 
form  of  gambling,  she  nevertheless  preserved 
the  most  rigid  decorum  and  morality  in  her 
own  household,  frowning  especially  upon  all 
intemperance,  and  never  permitting  a  pack  of 
cards  to  be  found  within  her  doors.  She  was 
greatly  beloved  and  respected  by  the  son,  whose 
mind  she  did  so  much  to  mould,  and  she  lived 
to  see  him  become  one  of  the  foremost  states 
men  of  the  country. 

Young  Benton  was  always  fond  of  reading. 
He  began  his  studies  at  home,  and  continued 
them  at  a  grammar  school  taught  by  a  young 
New  Englander  of  good  ability,  a  very  large  pro- 


EARLY  LIFE.  25 

portion  of  the  school-teachers  of  the  country 
then  coming  from  New  England;  indeed,  school 
teachers  and  peddlers  were,  on  the  whole,  the 
chief  contributions  made  by  the  Northeast  to  the 
personnel  of  the  new  Southwest.  Benton  then 
began  a  course  at  Chapel  Hill,  the  University 
of  North  Carolina,  but  broke  off  before  com 
pleting  it,  as  his  mother  decided  to  move  her 
family  westward  to  the  almost  unbroken  wil 
derness  near  Nashville,  Tennessee,  where  his 
father  had  left  them  a  large  tract  of  land.  But 
he  was  such  an  insatiable  student  and  reader 
that  he  rapidly  acquired  a  very  extensive  knowl 
edge,  not  only  of  law,  but  of  history  and  even  of 
Latin  and  English  literature,  and  thus  became 
a  well-read  and  cultivated,  indeed  a  learned, 
man ;  though  his  frequent  displays  of  learning 
and  knowledge  were  sometimes  marked  by  a 
trace  of  that  self-complacent,  amusing  pedantry 
so  apt  to  characterize  a  really  well-educated 
man  who  lives  in  a  community  in  which  he 
believes,  and  with  which  he  has  thoroughly 
identified  himself,  but  whose  members  are  for 
the  most  part  below  the  average  in  mental 
cultivation. 

The  Bentons  founded  a  little  town,  named 
after  them,  and  in  which,  of  course,  they  took 
their  position  as  leaders  and  rich  landed  propri 
etors.  It  lay  on  the  very  outskirts  of  the  Indian 


26  THOMAS  BART  BEN  TON. 

country  ;  indeed,  the  great  war  trail  of  the 
Southern  Indians  led  right  through  the  settle 
ment,  and  they  at  ail  times  swarmed  around  it. 
The  change  from  the  still  somewhat  rude  civil 
ization  of  North  Carolina  to  the  wildness  on 
the  border  was  far  less  abrupt  and  startling 
then  than  would  be  the  case  under  similar  cir 
cumstances  now,  and  the  Ben  tons  soon  identi 
fied  themselves  completely  with  the  life  and  in 
terests  of  the  people  around  them.  They  even 
abandoned  the  Episcopalianism  of  their  old 
home,  and  became  Methodists,  like  their  neigh 
bors.  Young  Benton  himself  had  his  hands 
full,  at  first,  in  attending  to  his  great  backwoods 
farm,  tilled  by  slaves,  and  in  pushing  the 
growth  of  the  settlement  by  building  first  a 
rude  log  school-house  (he  himself  taught  school 
at  one  time,  while  studying  law),  and  a  meet 
ing-house  of  the  same  primitive  construction, 
then  mills,  roads,  bridges,  and  so  forth.  The 
work  hardened  and  developed  him,  and  he 
readily  enough  turned  into  a  regular  frontiers 
man  of  the  better  and  richer  sort.  The  neigh 
boring  town  of  Nashville  was  a  raw,  pretentious 
place,  where  horse-racing,  cock  -  fighting,  gam 
bling,  whiskey-drinking,  and  the  various  coarse 
vices  which  masquerade  as  pleasures  in  frontier 
towns,  all  throve  in  rank  luxuriance.  It  was 
somewhat  of  a  change  from  Benton 's  early 


EARLY  LIFE.  27 

training,  but  he  took  to  it  kindly,  and  though 
never  a  vicious  or  debauched  man,  he  bore  his 
full  share  in  the  savage  brawls,  the  shooting 
and  stabbing  affrays,  which  went  to  make  up 
one  of  the  leading  features  in  the  excessively 
unattractive  social  life  of  the  place  and  epoch. 

At  that  time  dueling  prevailed  more  or  less 
throughout  the  United  States,  and  in  the  South 
and  West  to  an  extent  never  before  or  since 
attained.  On  the  frontier,  not  only  did  every 
man  of  spirit  expect  now  and  then  to  be  called 
on  to  engage  in  a  duel,  but  he  also  had  to  make 
up  his  mind  to  take  occasional  part  in  bloody 
street-fights.  Tennessee,  the  state  where  Benton 
then  had  his  home,  was  famous  for  the  affrays 
that  took  place  within  its  borders ;  and  that 
they  were  common  enough  among  the  people  at 
large  may  be  gathered  from  the  fact  that  they 
were  of  continual  occurrence  among  judges, 
high  state  officials,  and  in  the  very  legislature 
itself,  where  senators  and  assemblymen  were 
always  becoming  involved  in  undignified  rows 
and  foolish  squabbles,  apparently  without  fear 
of  exciting  any  unfavorable  comment,  as  witness 
Davy  Crockett's  naive  account  of  his  early  ex 
periences  as  a  backwoods  member  of  the  Tennes 
see  assembly.  Like  Jackson,  Benton  killed  his 
man  in  a  duel.  This  was  much  later,  in  1817, 
when  he  was  a  citizen  of  Missouri.  His  oppo- 


28  THOMAS  HART  BENT  ON. 

nent  was  a  lawyer  named  Lucas.  They  fought 
twice,  on  Bloody  Island,  near  St.  Louis.  On 
the  first  occasion  both  were  wounded ;  on  the 
second  Lucas  was  killed.  The  latter  came  of  a 
truculent  f amity.  A  recent  biographer  of  his 
father,  Judge  John  R.  Lucas,  remarks,  with 
refreshing  unconsciousness  of  the  grotesque 
humor  of  the  chronicle  :  "  This  gentleman  was 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  men  who  ever 
settled  west  of  the  Mississippi  River.  .  .  . 
Towards  the  close  of  his  life  Judge  Lucas 
became  melancholy  and  dejected  —  the  result 
of  domestic  affliction,  for  six  of  his  sons  met 
death  by  violence."  One  feels  curious  to  know 
how  the  other  sons  died. 

But  the  most  famous  of  Benton's  affrays  was 
that  with  Jackson  himself,  in  1813.  This  rose 
out  of  a  duel  of  laughable  rather  than  serious 
character,  in  which  Benton's  brother  was 
worsted  by  General  Carroll,  afterwards  one  of 
Jackson's  lieutenants  at  New  Orleans.  The 
encounter  itself  took  place  between  the  Benton 
brothers  on  one  side,  and  on  the  other,  Jackson, 
General  Coffee,  also  of  New  Orleans  fame,  and 
another  friend.  The  place  was  a  great  rambling 
Nashville  inn,  and  the  details  were  so  intricate 
that  probably  not  even  the  participants  them 
selves  knew  exactly  what  had  taken  place, 
while  all  the  witnesses  impartially  contradicted 


EARLY  LIFE.  29 

each  other  and  themselves.  At  any  rate,  Jack 
son  was  shot  and  Benton  was  pitched  headlong 
down-stairs,  and  all  the  other  combatants  were 
more  or  less  damaged ;  but  it  ended  in  Jackson 
being  carried  off  by  his  friends,  leaving  the 
Bentons  masters  of  the  field,  where  they 
strutted  up  and  down  and  indulged  in  a  good 
deal  of  loud  bravado.  Previous  to  this  Benton 
and  Jackson  had  been  on  the  best  of  terms,  and 
although  there  was  naturally  a  temporary  break 
in  their  friendship,  yet  it  proved  strong  enough 
in  the  end  to  stand  even  such  a  violent  wrench 
as  that  given  by  this  preposterously  senseless 
and  almost  fatal  brawl.  They  not  only  became 
completely  reconciled,  but  eventually  even  the 
closest  and  warmest  of  personal  and  political 
friends ;  for  Benton  was  as  generous  and  for 
giving  as  he  was  hot-tempered,  and  Jackson's 
ruder  nature  was  at  any  rate  free  from  any 
small  meanness  or  malice. 

In  spite  of  occasional  interludes  of  this  kind, 
which  must  have  given  a  rather  ferocious  fillip 
to  his  otherwise  monotonous  life,  Benton  com 
pleted  his  legal  studies,  was  admitted  to  the 
bar,  and  began  to  practice  as  a  frontier  lawyer 
at  Franklin.  Very  soon,  however,  he  for  the 
first  time  entered  the  more  congenial  field  of 
politics,  and  in  1811  served  a  single  term  in 
the  lower  house  of  the  Tennessee  legislature. 


30  THOMAS  HART  BENT  ON. 

Even  thus  early  he  made  his  mark.  He  had  a 
bill  passed  introducing  the  circuit  system  into 
the  state  judiciary,  a  reform  of  much  impor 
tance,  especially  to  the  poorer  class  of  litigants ; 
and  he  also  introduced,  and  had  enacted  into  a 
law,  a  bill  providing  that  a  slave  should  have 
the  same  right  to  the  full  benefit  of  a  jury  trial 
as  would  a  white  man  suffering  under  the  same 
accusation.  This  last  measure  is  noteworthy 
as  foreshadowing  the  position  which  Benton 
afterwards  took  in  national  politics,  where  he 
appeared  as  a  slave-holder,  it  is  true,  but  as  one 
of  the  most  enlightened  and  least  radical  of  his 
class.  Its  passage  also  showed  the  tendency  of 
Southern  opinion  at  the  time,  which  was  un 
doubtedly  in  the  direction  of  bettering  the  con 
dition  of  the  blacks,  though  the  events  of  the 
next  few  years  produced  such  a  violent  revul 
sion  of  feeling  concerning  the  negro  race  that 
this  current  of  public  opinion  was  completely 
reversed.  Benton,  however,  was  made  of  sturdy 
stuff,  and  as  he  grew  older  his  views  on  the 
question  did  not  alter  as  did  those  of  most  of 
his  colleagues. 

Shortly  after  he  left  the  legislature  the  War 
of  1812  broke  out,  and  its  events  impressed  on 
Benton  another  of  what  soon  became  his  cardi 
nal  principles.  The  war  was  brought  on  by 
the  South  and  West,  the  Democrats  all  favoring 


EARLY  LIFE.  31 

it,  while  the  Federalists,  forming  the  then  anti- 
Democratic  party,  especially  in  the  Northeast, 
opposed  it;  and  finally  their  more  extreme 
members,  at  the  famous  Hartford  Convention, 
passed  resolutions  supposed  to  tend  towards  the 
dissolution  of  the  Union,  and  which  brought 
upon  the  party  the  bitter  condemnation  of  their 
antagonists.  Says  Benton  himself:  "  At  the 
time  of  its  first  appearance  the  right  of  seces 
sion  was  repulsed  and  repudiated  by  the  De 
mocracy  generally.  .  .  .  The  leading  language 
in  respect  to  it  south  of  the  Potomac  was  that  no 
state  had  a  right  to  withdraw  from  the  Union, 
.  .  .  and  that  any  attempt  to  dissolve  it,  or  to 
obstruct  the  action  of  constitutional  laws,  was 
treason.  If  since  that  time  political  parties  and 
sectional  localities  have  exchanged  "attitudes  on 
this  question,  it  cannot  alter  the  question  of 
right."  For,  having  once  grasped  an  idea  and 
made  it  his  own,  Benton  clung  to  it  with  un 
yielding  tenacity,  no  matter  whether  it  was  or 
was  not  abandoned  by  the  majority  of  those 
with  whom  he  had  been  in  the  habit  of  acting. 
Thus  early  Benton's  political  character  be 
came  moulded  into  the  shape  which  it  ever 
afterwards  retained.  He  was  a  slave-holder, 
but  as  advanced  as  a  slave-holder  could  be ;  he 
remained  to  a  certain  extent  a  Southerner,  but 
his  Southernism  was  of  the  type  prevalent 


32  THOMAS   HART  BEN  TON. 

immediately  after  the  Revolution,  and  not  of 
the  kind  that  came  to  the  fore  prior  to  the 
Rebellion.  He  was  much  more  a  Westerner  in 
his  feelings,  and  more  than  all  else  he  was 
emphatically  a  Union  man. 

Like  every  other  hot  spirit  of  the  West  — 
and  the  West  was  full  of  little  but  hot  spirits 
—  Benton  heartily  favored  the  War  of  1812. 
He  served  as  a  colonel  of  volunteers  under 
Jackson,  but  never  saw  actual  fighting,  and  his 
short  term  of  soldiership  was  of  no  further 
account  than  to  furnish  an  excuse  to  Polk,  thir 
ty-five  years  later,  for  nominating  him  com 
manding  general  in  the  time  of  the  Mexican 
War,  —  an  incident  which,  as  the  nomination 
was  rejected,  may  be  regarded  as  merely  ludi 
crous,  the  gross  impropriety  of  the  act  safely 
defying  criticism.  He  was  of  genuine  use, 
however,  in  calling  on  and  exciting  the  volun 
teers  to  come  forward ;  for  he  was  a  fluent 
speaker,  of  fine  presence,  and  Ins  pompous  self- 
sufficiency  was  rather  admired-  than  otherwise 
by  the  frontiersmen,  while  his  force,  energy,  and 
earnestness  commanded  their  respect.  He  also, 
when  Jackson's  reckless  impetuosity  got  him 
into  a  snarl  with  the  feeble  national  adminis 
tration,  whose  imbecile  incapacity  to  carry  on 
the  war  became  day  by  day  more  painfully 
evident,  went  to  Washington,  and  there  finally 


EARLY  LIFE.  33 

extricated  his  chief  by  dint  of  threatening  that, 
if  "justice"  was  not  done  him,  Tennessee 
would,  in  future  political  contests,  be  found 
ranged  with  the  administration's  foes.  For 
Ben  ton  already  possessed  political  influence,  and 
being,  like  most  of  his  class,  anti-Federalist,  or 
Democratic,  in  sentiment,  was  therefore  of  the 
same  party  as  the  people  at  Washington,  and 
was  a  man  whose  representations  would  have 
some  weight  with  them. 

During  his  stay  in  Tennessee  Benton's  char 
acter  was  greatly f  influenced  by  his  being 
thrown  into  close  contact  with  many  of  the 
extraordinary  men  who  then  or  afterwards 
made  their  mark  in  the  strange  and  picturesque 
annals  of  the  Southwest.  Jackson  even  thus 
early  loomed  up  as  the  greatest  and  arch-typ 
ical  representative  of  his  people  and  his  section. 
The  religious  bent  of  the  time  was  shown  in 
the  life  of  the  grand,  rugged  old  Methodist, 
Peter  Cartwright,  who,  in  the  far-off  back 
woods,  was  a  preacher  and  practical  exponent 
of  "  muscular  Christianity  "  half  a  century  be 
fore  the  day  when,  under  Bishop  Selwyn  and 
Charles  Kingsley,  it  became  a  cult  among  the 
most  highly  civilized  classes  of  England.  There 
was  David  Crockett,  rifleman  and  congressman, 
doomed  to  a  tragic  and  heroic  death  in  that 
remarkable  conflict  of  which  it  was  said  at  the 

3 


34  THOMAS   HART  BENTON. 

time,  that  "  Thermopylae  had  its  messengers  of 
death,  but  the  Alamo  had  none ;  "  and  there 
was  Houston,  who,  after  a  singular  and  roman 
tic  career,  became  the  greatest  of  the  states 
men  and  soldiers  of  Texas.  It  was  these  men, 
and  their  like,  who,  under  the  shadow  of  world- 
old  forests  and  in  the  sunlight  of  the  great, 
lonely  plains,  wrought  out  the  destinies  of  a  na 
tion  and  a  continent,  and  who,  with  their  rude 
war-craft  and  state-craft,  solved  problems  that, 
iu  the  importance  of  their  results,  dwarf  the  is 
sues  of  all  European  struggles  since  the  day  of 
Waterloo  as  completely  as  the  Punic  Avars  in 
their  outcome  threw  into  the  shade  the  conse 
quences  of  the  wars  waged  at  the  same  time 
between  the  different  Greek  monarchies. 

Benton,  in  his  mental  training,  came  much 
nearer  to  the  statesmen  of  the  sea-board,  and 
was  far  better  bred  and  better  educated,  than 
the  rest  of  the  men  around  him.  But  he  was, 
and  was  felt  by  them  to  be,  thoroughly  one  of 
their  number,  and  the  most  able  expounder,  of 
their  views;  and  it  is  just  because  he  is  so  com 
pletely  the  type  of  a  great  and  important  class, 
rather  than  because  even  of  his  undoubted  and 
commanding  ability  as  a  statesman,  that  his 
life  and  public  services  will  always  repay  study. 
His  vanity  and  boastf  ulness  were  faults  which  he 
shared  with  almost  all  his  people  ;  and,  after  all, 


EARLY  LIFE.  35 

if  they  overrated  the  consequence  of  their  own 
deeds,  the  deeds,  nevertheless,  did  possess  great 
importance,  and  their  fault  was  slight  com 
pared  to  that  committed  by  some  of  us  at  the 
present  day,  who  have  gone  to  the  opposite  ex 
treme  and  try  to  belittle  the  actions  of  our 
fathers.  Ben  ton  was  deeply  imbued  with  the ' 
masterful,  overbearing  spirit  of  the  West,  —  a 
spirit  whose  manifestations  are  not  always  agree 
able,  but  the  possession  of  which  is  certainly  a 
most  healthy  sign  of  the  virile  strength  of  a 
young  community.  He  thoroughly  appreciated 
that  he  was  helping  to  shape  the  future  of  a 
country,  whose  wonderful  development  is  the 
most  important  feature  in  the  history  of  the 
nineteenth  century;  the  non- appreciation  of 
which  fact  is  in  itself  sufficient  utterly  to  dis 
qualify  any  American  statesman  from  rising  to 
the  first  rank. 

It  was  not  in  Tennessee,  however,  that  Benton 
rose  to  political  prominence,  for  shortly  after 
the  close  of  the  war  he  crossed  the  Mississippi 
and  made  his  permanent  home  in  the  territory 
of  Missj^twi.  Missouri  was  then  our  extreme 
western  outpost,  and  its  citizens  possessed  the 
characteristic  western  traits  to  an  even  ex 
aggerated  extent.  The  people  were  pushing, 
restless,  and  hardy ;  they  were  lawless  and  vio 
lent  to  a  degree.  In  spite  of  the  culture  and 


36  THOMAS  HART  BENT  ON. 

education  of  some  families,  society,  as  a  whole, 
was  marked  by  florid  unconventionality  and 
rawness.  The  general  and  widespread  intem 
perance  of  the  judges  and  high  officials  of  state 
was  even  more  marked  than  their  proclivities 
for  brawling.  The  lawyers,  as  usual,  furnished 
the  bulk  of  the  politicians ;  success  at  the  bai 
depended  less  upon  learning  than  upon  "  push  ' 
and  audacity.  The  fatal  feuds  between  indi 
viduals  and  families  were  as  frequent  and  as 
bloody  as  among  Highland  clans  a  century  be 
fore.  The  following  quotations  are  taken  at 
random  from  a  work  on  the  Bench  and  Bar  of 
Missouri,  by  an  ex-judge  of  its  supreme  court: 
"  A  man  by  the  name  of  Hiram  K.  Turk,  and 
four  sons,  settled  in  1839  near  Warsaw,  and  a 
personal  difficulty  occurred  between  them  and 
a  family  of  the  name  of  Jones,  resulting  in 
the  deatli  of  one  or  two.  The  people  began  to 
take  sides  with  one  or  the  other,  and  finally 
a  general  outbreak  took  place,  in  which  many 
were  killed,  resulting  in  a  general  reign  of 
terror  and  of  violence  beyond  the  power  of  the 
law  to  subdue."  The  social  annals  of  this 
pleasant  town  of  Warsaw  could  not  normally 
have  been  dull ;  in  1844,  for  instance,  they  were 
enlivened  by  Judge  Cherry  and  Senator  Major 
fighting  to  the  death  on  one  of  its  principal 
streets,  the  latter  being  slain.  The  judges 


EARLY  LIFE.  37 

themselves  were  by  no  means  bigoted  in  their 
support  of  law  and  order.  "  In  those  days  it 
was  common  for  people  to  settle  their  quarrels 
during  court  week.  .  .  .  Judge  Allen  took 
great  delight  in  these  exhibitions,  and  would  at 
any  time  adjourn  his  court  to  witness  one.  .  .  . 
He  (Allen)  always  traveled  with  a  holster  of 
large  pistols  in  front  of  his  saddle,  and  a  knife 
with  a  blade  at  least  a  foot  long."  Hannibal 
Chollop  was  no  mere  creature  of  fancy ;  on  the 
contrary,  his  name  was  legion,  and  he  flourished 
rankly  in  every  town  throughout  the  Mississippi 
valley.  But,  after  all,  this  ruffianism  was  really 
not  a  whit  worse  in  its  effects  on  the  national 
character  than  was  the  case  with  certain  of  the 
"universal  peace"  and  "non-resistance"  de 
velopments  in  the  Northeastern  States;  in  fact, 
it  was  more  healthy.  A  class  of  professional 
non-combatants  is  as  hurtful  to  the  real,  healthy 
growth  of  a  nation  as  is  a  class  of  fire-eaters ; 
for  a  weakness  or  folly  is  nationally  as  bad  as  a 
vice,  or  worse  ;  and,  in  the  long  run,  a  Quaker 
may  be  quite  as  undesirable  a  citizen  as  is  a 
duelist.  No  man  who  is  not  willing  to  bear 
arms  and  to  fight  for  his  rights  can  give  a  good 
reason  why  he  should  be  entitled  to  the  privi 
lege  of  living  in  a  free  community.  The  de 
cline  of  the  militant  spirit  in  the  Northeast 
during  the  first  half  of  this  century  was  much 


38  THOMAS   HART  BKNTON. 

to  be  regretted.  To  it  is  due,  more  than  to  ain 
other  cause,  the  undoubted  average  individual 
inferiority  of  the  Northern  compared  to  tilt- 
Southern  troops ;  at  any  rate,  at  the  beginning 
of  the  great  war  of  the  Rebellion.  The  South 
erners,  by  their  whole  mode  of  living,  their 
habits,  and  their  love  of  out-door  sports,  kepi 
up  their  warlike  spirit ;  while  in  the  North  the 
so-called  upper  classes  developed  along  the  lines 
of  a  wealthy  and  timid  bourgeoisie  type,  meas 
uring  everything  by  a  mercantile  standard  (a 
peculiarly  debasing  one  if  taken  purely  by 
itself),  and  submitting  to  be  ruled  in  local 
affairs  by  low  foreign  mobs,  and  in  national 
matters  by  their  arrogant  Southern  kinsmen. 
The  militant  spirit  of  these  last  certainly  stood 
them  in  good  stead  in  the  Civil  War.  The 
world  has  never  seen  better  soldiers  than  those 
who  followed  Lee  ;  and  their  leader  will  un 
doubtedly  rank  as  without  any  exception  the 
very  greatest  of  all  the  great  captains  that  the 
English-speaking  peoples  have  brought  forth 
—  and  this,  although  the  last  and  chief  of  his 
antagonists  may  himself  claim  to  stand  as  the 
full  equal  of  Marlborough  and  Wellington. 

The  other  Western  States  still  kept  touch  on 
the  old  colonial  communities  of  the  sea-coast, 
having  a  second  or  alternative  outlet  through 
Louisiana,  newly  acquired  by  the  LTnited  States, 


EARLY  LIFE.    «  39 

it  is  true,  but  which  was  nevertheless  an  old  set 
tled  land.  Missouri,  however,  had  lost  all  con 
nection  with  the  sea-coast,  and  though,  through 
her  great  river  towns,  swarming  with  raftsmen 
and  flat-boatmen,  she  drove  her  main  and  most 
thriving  trade  with  the  other  Mississippi  cities, 
yet  her  restless  and  adventure-loving  citizens 
were  already  seeking  other  outlets  for  their  ac 
tivity,  and  were  establishing  trade  relations  with 
the  Mexicans ;  being  thus  the  earliest  among 
our  people  to  come  into  active  contact  with  the 
Hispano-Indian  race  from  whom  we  afterwards 
wrested  so  large  a  part  of  their  inheritance. 
Missouri  was  thrust  out  beyond  the  Mississippi 
into  the  vast  plains-country  of  the  Far  West, 
and  except  on  the  river-front  was  completely 
isolated,  being  flanked  on  every  side  by  great 
stretches  of  level  wilderness,  inhabited  by  roam 
ing  tribes  of  warlike  Indians.  Thus  for  the 
first  time  the  borderers  began  to  number  in 
their  ranks  plainsmen  as  well  as  backwoods 
men.  In  such  a  community  there  were  sure  to 
be  numbers  of  men  anxious  to  take  part  in  any 
enterprise  that  united  the  chance  of  great  pe 
cuniary  gain  with  the  certainty  of  even  greater 
personal  risk,  and  both  these  conditions  were 
fulfilled  in  the  trading  expeditions  pushed  out 
from  Missouri  across  the  trackless  wastes  lying 
between  it  and  the  fringe  of  Mexican  settle- 


40  THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

ments  on  the  Rio  del  Norte.  The  route  fol 
lowed  by  these  caravans,  which  brought  back 
furs  and  precious  metals,  soon  became  famous 
under  the  name  of  the  Santa  F£  trail ;  and 
the  story  of  the  perils,  hardships,  and  gains  of 
the  adventurous  traders  who  followed  it  would 
make  one  of  the  most  striking  chapters  oi 
American  history. 

Among  such  people  Benton's  views  and  habits 
of  thought  became  more  markedly  Western  and 
ultra-American  than  ever,  especially  in  regard 
to  our  encroachments  upon  the  territory  oi 
neighboring  powers.  The  general  feeling  in 
the  West  upon  this  last  subject  afterwards 
crystallized  into  what  became  known  as  the 
"  Manifest  Destiny  "  idea,  which,  reduced  to  itt 
simplest  terms,  was  :  that  it  was  our  manifest 
destiny  to  swallow  up  the  land  of  all  adjoining 
nations  who  were  too  weak  to  withstand  us ;  a 
theory  that  forthwith  obtained  immense  pop 
ularity  among  all  statesmen  of  easy  interna 
tional  morality.  It  cannot  be  too  often  re 
peated  that  no  one  can  understand  even  the 
domestic,  and  more  especially  the  foreign,  pol 
icy  of  Benton  and  his  school  without  first  un 
derstanding  the  surroundings  amidst  which  they 
had  been  brought  up  and  the  people  whose 
chosen  representatives  they  were.  Recent  his 
torians,  for  instance,  always  speak  as  if  our 


EARL  Y  LIFE.  41 

grasping  after  territory  in  the  Southwest  was 
due  solely  to  the  desire  of  the  Southerners  to 
acquire  lands  out  of  which  to  carve  new  slave- 
holding  states,  and  as  if  it  was  merely  a  move 
in  the  interests  of  the  slave-power.  This  is 
true  enough  so  far  as  the  motives  of  Calhoun, 
Tyler,  and  the  other  public  leaders  of  the  Gulf 
and  southern  sea-board  states  were  concerned. 
But  the  hearty  Western  support  given  to  the 
movement  was  due  to  entirely  different  causes, 
the  chief  among  them  being  the  fact  that  the 
Westerners  honestly  believed  themselves  to  be 
indeed  created  the  heirs  of  the  earth,  or  at  least 
of  so  much  of  it  as  was  known  by  the  name  of 
North  America,  and  were  prepared  to  struggle 
stoutly  for  the  immediate  possession  of  their 
heritage. 

One  of  Benton's  earliest  public  utterances 
was  in  regard  to  a  matter  which  precisely 
illustrates  this  feeling*  It  was  while  Missouri 
was  still  a  territory,  and  when  Benton,  then  a 
prominent  member  of  the  St.  Louis  bar,  had 
by  his  force,  capacity,  and  power  as  a  public 
speaker  already  become  well  known  among  his 
future  constituents.  The  treaty  with  Spain,  by 
which  we  secured  Florida,  was  then  before  the 
Senate,  which  body  had  to  consider  it  several 
times,  owing  to  the  dull  irresolution  and  sloth 
of  the  Spanish  government  in  ratifying  it.  The 


42  THOMAS  HART  BENT  ON. 

bounds  it  gave  us  were  far  too  narrow  to  sail, 
the  more  fiery  Western  spirits,  and  these  cheeree 
Benton  to  the  echo  when  he  attacked  it  in  pub 
lie  with  fierce  vehemence.  "  The  magnificent 
valley  of  the  Mississippi  is  ours,  with  all  its 
fountains,  springs,  and  floods  ;  and  woe  to  the 
statesman  who  shall  undertake  to  surrender  one 
drop  of  its  water,  one  inch  of  its  soil  to  any  for 
eign  power."  So  he  said,  his  words  ringing 
with  the  boastful  confidence  so  well  liked  by 
the  masterful  men  of  the  West,  strong  in  their 
youth,  and  proudly  conscious  of  their  strength. 
The  treaty  was  ratified  in  the  Senate,  neverthe 
less,  all  the  old  Southern  States  favoring  it, 
and  the  only  votes  at  any  stage  recorded  against 
it  being  of  four  Western  senators,  coming  re 
spectively  from  Ohio,  Kentucky,  Tennessee, 
and  Louisiana.  So  that  in  1818,  at  any  rate,  the 
desire  for  territorial  aggrandizement  at  the  ex 
pense  of  Maine  or  Mexico  was  common  to  the 
West  as  a  whole,  both  to  the  free  arid  the  slave 
states,  and  was  not  exclusively  favored  by  the 
Southerners.  The  only  effect  of  Benton 's  speech 
was  to  give  rise  to  the  idea  that  he  was  hostile 
to  the  Southern  and  Democratic  administration 
at  Washington,  and  against  this  feeling  he  had 
to  contend  in  the  course  of  his  successful  can 
didacy  for  the  United  States  senatorship  the 
following  year,  when  Missouri  was  claiming  ad 
mittance  to  the  Union. 


EARLY  LIFE.  43 

It  was  in  reference  to  this  matter  of  admit 
ting  Missouri  that  the  slavery  question  for  the 
first  time  made  its  appearance  in  national 
politics,  where  it  threw  everything  into  confu 
sion  and  for  the  moment  overshadowed  all  else  ; 
though  it  vanished  almost  as  quickly  as  it  had 
appeared,  and  did  not  again  come  to  the  front 
for  several  years.  The  Northerners,  as  a  whole, 
desiring  to  "  restrict  "  the  growth  of  slav 
ery  and  the  slave-power,  demanded  that  Mis 
souri,  before  being  admitted  as  a  state,  should 
abolish  slavery  within  her  boundaries.  The 
South  was  equally  determined  that  she  should 
be  admitted  as  a  slave  state  ;  and  for  the  first 
time  the  politicians  of  the  country  divided  on 
geographical  rather  than  on  party  lines,  though 
the  division  proved  but  temporary,  and  was  of 
but  little  interest  except  as  foreshadowing  what 
was  to  come  a  score  of  years  later.  Even  within 
the  territory  itself  the  same  contest  was  carried 
on  with  the  violence  bred  by  political  conflicts 
in  frontier  states,  there  being  a  very  respecta 
ble  "  restriction  "  party,  which  favored  aboli 
tion.  Benton  was  himself  a  slave-holder,  and 
as  the  question  was  in  no  way  one  between  the 
East  and  the  West,  or  between  the  Union  as  a 
whole  and  any  part  of  it,  he  naturally  gave  full 
swing  to  his  Southern  feelings,  and  entered  with 
tremendous  vigor  into  the  contest  on  the  anti- 


44  THOMAS  HART  SEN  TON. 

restriction  side.  So  successful  were  his  efforts, 
and  so  great  was  the  majority  of  the  Mis- 
sourians  who  sympathized  with  him,  that  the 
restrictionists  were  completely  routed  and  suc 
ceeded  in  electing  but  one  delegate  to  the  con 
stitutional  convention.  In  Congress  the  matter 
was  finally  settled  by  the  passage  of  the  famous 
Missouri  Compromise  bill,  a  measure-  Southern 
in  its  origin,  but  approved  at  the  time  by  many 
if  not  most  Northerners,  and  disapproved  by 
not  a  few  Southerners.  Benton  heartily  believed 
in  it,  announcing  somewhat  vaguely  that  he 
was  "  equally  opposed  to  slavery  agitation  and 
to  slavery  extension."  By  its  terms  Missouri 
was  admitted  as  a  slave  state,  while  slavery  was 
abolished  in  all  the  rest  of  the  old  province  of 
Louisiana  lying  north  and  west  of  it  and  north  of 
the  parallel  of  86°  30'.  Owing  to  an  objection 
able  clause  in  its  Constitution,  the  admission 
was  not  fully  completed  until  1821,  and  then 
only  through  the  instrumentality  of  Henry 
Clay.  But  Benton  took  his  seat  immediately, 
and  entered  on  his  thirty  years'  of  service  in 
the  United  States  Senate.  His  appearance  in 
national  politics  was  thus  coincident  with  the 
appearance  of  the  question  which,  it  is  true, 
almost  immediately  sank  out  of  sight  for  a 
period  of  fifteen  years,  but  which  then  reap 
peared  to  stay  for  good  and  to  become  of  pro- 


EARLY  LIFE.  45 

gressively  absorbing  importance,  until,  combin 
ing  itself  with  the  still  greater  question  of  na 
tional  unity,  it  dwarfed  all  other  issues,  cleft 
the  West  as  well  as  the  East  asunder,  and,  as 
one  of  its  minor  results,  brought  about  the 
political  downfall  of  Benton  himself  and  of  his 
whole  school  in  what  were  called  the  Border 
States. 

Before  entering  the  Senate,  Benton  did  some 
thing  which  well  illustrates  his  peculiar  upright 
ness,  and  the  care  which  he  took  to  keep  his  pub 
lic  acts  free  from  the  least  suspicion  of  improper 
influence.  When  he  was  at  the  bar  in  St.  Louis, 
real  estate  litigation  was  much  the  most  impor 
tant  branch  of  legal  business.  The  condition  of 
Missouri  land-titles  was  very  mixed,  since  many 
of  them  were  based  upon  the  thousands  of  "  con 
cessions  "  of  land  made  by  the  old  French  and 
Spanish  governments,  which  had  been  ratified 
by  Congress,  but  subject  to  certain  conditions 
which  the  Creole  inhabitants,  being  ignorant 
and  lawless,  had  generally  failed  to  fulfill.  By 
an  act  of  Congress  these  inchoate  claims  were  to 
be  brought  before  the  United  States  recorder  of 
land  titles ;  and  the  Missouri  bar  were  divided 
as  to  what  action  should  be  taken  on  them,  the 
majority  insisting  that  they  should  be  held  void, 
while  Benton  headed  the  opposite  party,  which 
was  averse  to  forfeiting  property  on  technical 


46  THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

grounds,  and  advocated  the  confirmation  of 
every  honest  claim.  Further  and  important 
legislation  was  needed  to  provide  for  these 
claims.  Benton,  being  much  the  most  influen 
tial  member  of  the  bar  who  had  advocated  the 
confirmation  of  the  claims,  and  being  so  able, 
honest,  and  energetic,  was  the  favorite  counsel 
of  the  claimants,  and  had  hundreds  of  their 
titles  under  his  professional  charge.  Of  course 
in  such  cases  the  compensation  of  the  lawyer 
depended  solely  upon  his  success ;  and  success 
to  Benton  would  have  meant  wealth.  Never 
theless,  and  though  his  action  was  greatly  to 
his  own  pecuniary  hurt,  the  first  thing  lie  did 
when  elected  senator  was  to  convene  his  clients, 
and  tell  them  that  henceforth  he  could  have 
nothing  more  to  do,  as  their  attorney,  with  the 
prosecution  of  their  claims,  giving  as  his  reason 
that  their  success  largely  depended  upon  the  ac 
tion  of  Congress,  of  which  he  was  now  himself 
a  member,  so  that  he  was  bound  to  consult,  not 
any  private  interest,  but  the  good  of  the  com 
munity  as  a  whole.  He  even  refused  to  desig 
nate  his  successor  in  the  causes,  saying  that  he 
was  determined  not  only  to  be  quite  unbiased 
in  acting  upon  the  subject  of  these  claims  as 
senator,  but  not  to  have,  nor  to  be  suspected 
of  having,  any  personal  interest  in  the  fate  of 
any  of  them.  Many  a  modern  statesman  might 
most  profitably  copy  his  sensitiveness. 


CHAPTER   III. 
EARLY   TEARS  IN  THE  SENATE. 

WHEN  Benton  took  his  seat  in  the  United 
States  Senate,  Monroe,  the  last  president  of 
the  great  house  of  Virginia,  was  about  beginning 
his  second  term.  He  was  a  courteous,  high-bred 
gentleman,  of  no  especial  ability,  but  well  fitted 
to  act  as  presidential  figure-head  during  the 
politically  quiet  years  of  that  era  of  good  feel 
ing  which  lasted  from  1816  till  1824.  The 
Federalist  party,  after  its  conduct  during  the 
war,  had  vanished  into  well-deserved  obscurity, 
and  though  influences  of  various  sorts  were 
working  most  powerfully  to  split  the  dominant 
and  all-embracing  Democracy  into  factional 
fragments,  these  movements  had  not  yet  come 
to  a  head. 

The  slavery  question,  it  cannot  be  too  often 
said,  was  as  yet  of  little  or  no  political  conse 
quence.  The  violent  excitement  over  the  ad 
mission  of  Missouri  had  subsided  as  quickly 
as  it  had  arisen  ;  and  though  the  Compromise 
bill  was  of  immense  importance  in  itself,  and 


48  THOMAS    HART  BF.NTON. 

still  more  as  giving  a  hint  of  what  was  to  come, 
it  must  be  remembered  that  its  effect  upon 
general  politics,  during  the  years  immediately 
succeeding  its  passage,  was  slight.  Later  on,  the 
slavery  question  became  of  such  paramount  con 
sequence,  and  so  completely  identified  with  the 
movement  for  the  dissolution  of  the  Union,  that 
it  seems  impossible  for  even  the  best  of  recent 
historians  of  American  politics  to  understand 
that  such  wras  not  the  case  at  this  time.  One 
writer  of  note  even  goes  so  far  as  to  state  that 
"  From  the  night  of  March  2,  1820,  party  his 
tory  is  made  up  without  interruption  or  break 
of  the  development  of  geographical  [the  context 
shows  this  to  mean  Northern  and  Southern] 
parties."  There  is  very  little  ground  for  such 
a  sweeping  assertion  until  a  considerable  time 
after  the  date  indicated  ;  indeed,  it  was  more 
than  ten  years  later  before  any  symptom  of  the 
development  spoken  of  became  at  all  marked. 
Until  then,  parties  divided  even  less  on  geo 
graphical  lines  than  had  been  the  case  earlier, 
during  the  last  years  of  the  existence  of  the 
Federalists ;  and  what  little  division  there  was 
had  no  reference  to  slavery.  Nor  was  it  till 
nearly  a  score  of  years  after  the  passage  of  the 
Missouri  Compromise  bill  that  the  separatist 
spirit  began  to  identify  itself  for  good  with  the 
idea  of  the  maintenance  of  slavery.  Previously 


EARLY   YEARS   IN   THE  SENATE.  49 

to  that  there  had  been  outbursts  of  separatist 
feeling  in  different  states,  but  always  due  to  en 
tirely  different  causes.  Georgia  flared  up  in  hot 
defiance  of  the  federal  government,  when  the 
latter  rubbed  against  her  on  the  question  of  re 
moving  the  Cherokees  from  within  her  borders. 
But  her  having  negro  slaves  did  not  affect  her 
feelings  in  the  least,  and  her  attitude  was  just 
such  as  any  Western  state  with  Indians  on  its 
frontier  is  now  apt  to  assume  so  far  as  it  dares, 
—  such  an  attitude  as  Arizona,  for  example, 
would  at  this  moment  take  in  reference  to  the 
Apaches,  if  she  were  able.  Slavery  was  doubt 
less  remotely  one  of  the  irritating  causes  that 
combined  to  work  South  Carolina  up  to  a  fever 
heat  of  insanity  over  the  nullification  excite 
ment.  But  in  its  immediate  origin  nullification 
arose  from  the  outcry  against  the  protective 
tariff,  and  it  is  almost  as  unfair  to  ascribe  it 
in  any  way  to  the  influence  of  slavery  as  it 
would  be  to  assign  a  similar  cause  for  the  Vir 
ginia  and  Kentucky  resolutions  of  1798,  or  to 
say  that  the  absence  of  slavery  was  the  reason 
for  the  abortively  disloyal  agitation  in  New 
England,  Avhich  culminated  in  the  Hartford  Con 
vention.  The  separatist  feeling  is  ingrained  in 
the  fibre  of  our  race,  and  though  in  itself  a 
most  dangerous  failing  and  weakness,  is  yet 
merely  a  perversion  and  distortion  of  the  defiant 


50  THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

and  self-reliant  independence  of  spirit  which  is 
one  of  the  chief  of  the  race  virtues  ;  and  slavery 
was  partly  the  cause  and  partly  merely  the 
occasion  of  the  abnormal  growth  of  the  separa 
tist  movement  in  the  South.  Nor  was  the  tariff 
question  so  intimately  associated  with  that  of 
slavery  as  has  been  commonly  asserted.  This 
might  be  easily  guessed  from  the  fact  that  the 
originator  and  chief  advocate  of  a  high  tariff 
himself  came  from  a  slave  state,  and  drew  many 
of  his  warmest  supporters  from  among  the  slave- 
holding  sugar-planters.  Except  in  the  futile 
discussion  over  the  proposed  Panama  Congress  it 
was  not  till  Benton's  third  senatorial  term  that 
slavery  became  of  really  great  weight  in  politics. 
One  of  the  first  subjects  that  attracted  Ben- 
ton's  attention  in  the  Senate  was  the  Oregon 
question,  and  on  this  he  showed  himself  at  once 
in  his  true  character  as  a  Western  man,  proud 
alike  of  every  part  of  his  country,  and  as  desir 
ous  of  seeing  the  West  extended  in  a  northerly 
as  in  a  southerly  direction.  Himself  a  slave 
holder,  from  a  slave  state,  he  was  one  of  the 
.earliest  and  most  vehement  advocates  of  the  ex 
tension  of  our  free  territory  northwards  along 
the  Pacific  coast.  All  the  country  stretching 
north  and  south  of  the  Oregon  River  was  then 
held  by  the  United  States  in  joint  possession 
with  Great  Britain.  But  the  whole  region  was 


EARLY   YEARS  IN  THE    SENATE.  51 

still  entirely  unsettled,  and  as  a  matter  of  fact 
our  British  rivals  were  the  only  parties  in  actual 
occupation.  The  title  to  the  territory  was 
doubtful,  as  must  always  be  the  case  when  it 
rests  upon  the  inaccurate  maps  of  forgotten  ex 
plorers,  or  upon  the  chance  landings  of  stray 
sailors  and  traders,  especially  if  the  land  in 
dispute  is  unoccupied  and  of  vast  but  uncer 
tain  extent,  of  little  present  value,  and  far  dis 
tant  from  the  powers  claiming  it.  The  real 
truth  is  that  such  titles  are  of  very  little  prac 
tical  value,  and  are  rightly  enough  disregarded  , 
by  any  nations  strong  enough  to  do  so.  Ben-  I 
ton's  intense  Americanism,  and  his  pride  and 
confidence  in  his  country  and  in  her  unlimited 
capacity  for  growth  of  every  sort,  gifted  him 
with  the  power  to  look  much  farther  into  the 
future,  as  regarded  the  expansion  of  the  United 
States,  than  did  his  colleagues;  and  moreover 
caused  him  to  consider  the  question  from  a 
much  more  far-seeing  and  statesmanlike  stand 
point.  The  land  belonged  to  no  man,  and  yet 
was  sure  to  become  very  valuable  ;  our  title  to  it 
was  not  very  good,  but  was  probably  better  than 
that  of  any  one  else.  Sooner  or  later  it  would 
be  filled  with  the  overflow  of  our  population, 
and  would  border  on  our  dominion,  and  on 
our  dominion  alone.  It  was  therefore  just,  and 
moreover  in  the  highest  degree  desirable,  that 


52  THOMAS   HART  BENT  ON. 

it  should  be  made  a  part  of  that  dominion  at 
the  earliest  possible  moment.  Benton  intro 
duced  a  bill  to  enable  the  president  to  terminate 
the  arrangement  with  Great  Britain  and  make 
a  definite  settlement  in  our  favor  ;  and  though 
the  Senate  refused  to  pass  it,  yet  he  had  the 
satisfaction  of  bringing  the  subject  prominently 
before  the  people,  and,  moreover,  of  outlining 
the  way  in  which  it  would  have  to  be  and  was 
finally  settled.  In  one  of  his  speeches  on  the 
matter  he  said,  using  rather  highflown  language, 
(for  he  was  unfortunately  deficient  in  sense  of 
humor) :  u  Upon  the  people  of  Eastern  Asia  the 
establishment  of  a  civilized  power  on  the  oppo 
site  coast  of  America  could  not  fail  to  produce 
great  and  wonderful  benefits.  Science,  liberal 
principles  in  government,  and  the  true  religion 
might  cast  their  lights  across  the  intervening 
sea.  The  valley  of  the  Columbia  might  become 
the  granary  of  China  and  Japan,  and  an  outlet 
to  their  imprisoned  and  exuberant  population." 
Could  he  have  foreseen  how,  in  the  future,  the 
Americans  of  the  valley  of  the  Columbia  would 
greet  the  "  imprisoned  and  exuberant  popula 
tion  "  of  China,  he  would  probably  have  been 
more  doubtful  as  to  the  willingness  of  the  latter 
empire  to  accept  our  standard  of  the  true  relig 
ion  and  liberal  principles  of  government.  In 
the  course  of  the  same  speech  he  for  the  first 


EARLY    YEARS    IN  THE   SENATE.  53 

time,  and  by  what  was  then  considered  a  bold 
flight  of  imagination,  suggested  the  possibility 
of  sending  foreign  ministers  to  the  Oriental 
nations,  to  China,  Japan,  and  Persia,  "and  even 
to  the  Grand  Turk." 

Better  success  attended  a  bill  he  introduced 
to  establish  a  trading-road  from  Missouri  through 
the  Indian  country  to  New  Mexico,  which,  after 
much  debate,  passed  both  houses  and  was  signed 
by  President  Monroe.  The  road  thus  marked 
out  and  established  became,  and  remained  for 
many  years,  a  great  thoroughfare,  and  among 
the  chief  of  the  channels  through  which  our  for 
eign  commerce  flowed.  Until  Benton  secured 
the  enactment  of  this  law,  so  important  to  the 
interests  and  development  of  the  West,  the 
overland  trade  with  Mexico  had  been  carried 
on  by  individual  effort  and  at  the  cost  of  incal 
culable  hazard,  hardship,  and  risk  of  life.  Mex 
ico,  with  its  gold  and  silver  mines,  its  strange 
physical  features,  its  population  utterly  foreign 
to  us  in  race,  religion,  speech,  and  ways  of  life, 
and  especially  because  of  the  glamour  of  mys 
tery  which  surrounded  it  and  partly  shrouded 
it  from  sight,  always  dazzled  and  strongly  at 
tracted  the  minds  of  the  Southwesterners,  occu 
pying  much  the  same  place  in  their  thoughts 
that  the  Spanish  Main  did  in  the  imagination  of 
England  during  the  reign  of  Elizabeth.  The 


54  THOMAS   HART  BENTOX. 

young  men  of  the  Mississippi  valley  looked  upoi 
a,n  expedition  with  one  of  the  bands  of  armet 
traders,  who  wound  their  way  across  Indian 
haunted  wastes,  through  deep  canyons  and  ovei 
lofty  mountain  passes,  to  Santa  Fe",  Chihuahua, 
and  Sonora,  with  the  same  feelings  of  eager  ex 
citement  and  longing  that  were  doubtless  felt  by 
some  of  their  forefathers  more  than  two  centu 
ries  previously  in  regard  to  the  cruises  of  Drake 
and  Hawkins.  The  long  wagon  trains  or  pack 
trains  of  the  traders  carried  with  them  all  kinds 
of  goods,  but  especially  cotton,  and  brought  back 
gold  and  silver  bullion,  bales  of  furs  and  droves 
of  mules  ;  and,  moreover,  they  brought  back  tales 
of  lawless  adventure,  of  great  gains  and  losses, 
of  fights  -against  Indians  and  Mexicans,  and  of 
triumphs  and  privations,  which  still  further  in 
flamed  the  minds  of  the  Western  men.  Where 
they  had  already  gone  as  traders,  who  could  on 
occasion  fight,  they  all  hoped  on  some  future 
day  to  go  as  warriors,  who  would  acquire  gain 
by  their  conquests.  These  hopes  were  openly 
expressed,  and  with  very  little  more  idea  of 
there  being  any  right  or  wrong  in  the  matter 
than  so  many  Norse  Vikings  might  have  felt. 
The  Southwesterners  are  credited  with  alto 
gether  too  complex  motives  when  it  is  supposed 
that  they  were  actuated  in  regard  to  the  conquest 
of  northern  Mexico  by  a  desire  to  provide  for 


EARLY    YEARS 


additional  slave  states  to  offset  the  growth  of 
the  North  ;  their  emotions  in  regard  to  their 
neighbor's  land  were  in  the  main  perfectly  sim 
ple  and  purely  piratical.  That  the  Northeast 
did  not  share  in  the  greed  for  new  territory 
felt  by  the  other  sections  of  the  country  was 
due  partly  to.  the  decline  in  its  militant  spirit, 
(a  decline  on  many  accounts  sincerely  to  be 
regretted,)  and  partly  to  its  geographical  situ 
ation,  since  it  adjoined  Canada,  an  unattrac 
tive  and  already  well-  settled  country,  jealously 
guarded  by  the  might  of  Great  Britain. 

Another  question,  on  which  Benton  showed 
himself  to  be  thoroughly  a  representative  of 
Western  sentiment,  was  the  removal  of  the 
Indian  tribes.  Here  he  took  a  most  active  and 
prominent  part  in  reporting  and  favoring  the 
bills,  and  in  advocating  the  treaties,  by  which 
the  Indian  tribes  of  the  South  and  West  were 
forced  or  induced,  (for  the  latter  word  was  very 
frequently  used  as  a  euphemistic  synonym  of 
the  former,)  to  abandon  great  tracts  of  territory 
to  the  whites  and  to  move  farther  away  from 
the  boundaries  of  their  ever-encroaching  civili 
zation.  Nor  was  his  action  wholly  limited  to 
the  Senate,  for  it  was  at  his  instance  that 
General  Clark,  at  St.  Louis,  concluded  the 
treaties  with  the  Kansas  and  Osage  tribes,  by 
which  the  latter  surrendered  to  the  United 


56  THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

States  all  the  vast  territory  which  they  nom 
inally  owned  west  of  Missouri  and  Arkansas, 
except  small  reserves  for  themselves.  Benton, 
as  was  to  be  expected,  took  the  frontier  view 
of  the  Indian  question,  which,  by  the  way, 
though  often  wrong,  is  much  more  apt  to  be 
right  than  is  the  so  -  called  humanitarian  or 
Eastern  view.  But,  so  far  as  was  compatible 
with  having  the  Indians  removed,  he  always 
endeavored  to  have  them  kindly  and  humanely 
treated.  There  was,  of  course,  much  injustice 
and  wrong  inevitably  attendant  upon  the  In 
dian  policy  advocated  by  him,  and  by  the  rest 
of  the  Southern  and  Western  statesmen  ;  but 
it  is  difficult  to  see  what  other  course  could 
have  been  pursued  with  most  of  the  tribes.  In 
the  Western  States  there  were  then  sixty  mil 
lions  of  acres  of  the  best  land,  owned  in  great 
tracts  by  barbarous  or  half-barbarous  Indians, 
who  were  always  troublesome  and  often  dan 
gerous  neighbors,  and  who  did  not  come  in  any 
way  under  the  laws  of  the  states  in  which  they 
lived.  The  states  thus  encumbered  would  evi 
dently  never  have  been  satisfied  until  all  their 
soil  was  under  their  own  jurisdiction  and  open 
to  settlement.  The  Cherokees  had  advanced 
far  on  the  road  toward  civilization,  and  it  was 
undoubtedly  a  cruel  grief  and  wrong  to  take 
them  away  from  their  homes  ;  but  the  only  al- 


EARLY   YEARS   IN  THE  SENATE.  57 

ternative  would  have  been  to  deprive  them  o*f 
much  of  their  land,  and  to  provide  for  their 
gradually  becoming  citizens  of  the  states  in 
which  they  were.  For  a  movement  of  this  sort 
the  times  were  not  then,  and,  unfortunately, 
are  not  yet  ripe. 

Much  maudlin  nonsense  has  been  written 
about  the  governmental  treatment  of  the  In= 
dians,  especially  as  regards  taking  their  land. 
For  the  simple  truth  is  that  they  had  no  possi 
ble  title  to  most  of  the  lands  we  took,  not  even 
that  of  occupancy,  and  at  the  most  were  in 
possession  merely  by  virtue  of  having  butch 
ered  the  previous  inhabitants.  For  many  of 
its  actions  towards  them  the  government  does 
indeed  deserve  the  severest  criticism  ;  but  it 
has  erred  quite  as  often  on  the  side  of  too  much 
.^jpiency  as  on  the  side  of  too  much  severity. 
From  the  very  nature  of  things,  it  was  wholly 
impossible  that  there  should  not  be  much  mu 
tual  wrong-doing  and  injury  in  the  intercourse 
between  the  Indians  and  ourselves.  It  was 
equally  out  of  the  question  to  let  them  remain 
as  they  were,  and  to  bring  the  bulk  of  their 
number  up  to  our  standard  of  civilization  with 
sufficient  speed  to  enable  them  to  accommodate 
themselves  to  the  changed  condition  of  their 
surroundings.  The  policy  towards  them  advo 
cated  by  Benton,  which  was  much  the  same  as, 


58  THOMAS  HART  BEN  TON. 

although  more  humane  than,  that  followed  by 
most  other  Western  men  who  have  had  practi 
cally  to  face  the  problem,  worked  harshly  in 
many  instances,  and  was  the  cause  of  a  certain 
amount  of  temporary  suffering.  But  it  was 
infinitely  better  for  the  nation,  as  a  whole,  and, 
in  the  end,  was  really  more  just  and  merciful, 
than  it  would  have  been  to  attempt  following 
out  any  of  the  visionary  schemes  which  the 
more  impracticable  Indian  enthusiasts  are  fond 
of  recommending. 

It  was  during  Monroe's  List  term  that  Henry 
Clay  brought  in  the  first  protective  tariff  bill, 
as  distinguished  from  tariff  bills  to  raise  reve 
nue  with  protection  as  an  incident  only.  It  was 
passed  by  a  curiously  mixed  vote,  which  hardly 
indicated  any  one's  future  position  on  the  tariff 
excepting  that  of  Clay  himself;  MassachusetL, 
under  the  lead  of  Webster,  joining  hands  with 
the  Southern  sea-coast  states  to  oppose  it,  while 
Tennessee  and  New  York  split,  and  Missouri 
and  Kentucky,  together  with  most  of  the  North, 
favored  it.  Benton  voted  for  it,  but  on  the 
great  question  of  internal  improvements  he 
stood  out  clearly  for  the  views  that  he  ever 
afterwards  held.  This  was  first  brought  up  by 
the  veto,  on  constitutional  grounds,  of  the 
Cumberland  Road  bill,  which  had  previously 
passed  both  houses  with  singular  unanimity, 


EARLY  YEARS  IN  THE  SENATE.      59 

Benton's  vote  being  one  of  the  very  few  re 
corded  against  it.  In  regard  to  all  such  matters 
Benton  was  strongly  in  favor  of  a  strict  con 
struction  of  the  Constitution  and  of  guarding 
the  rights  of  the  states,  in  spite  of  his  devoted 
attachment  to  the  Union.  While  voting  against 
this  bill,  and  denying  the  power  or  the  right  of 
the  federal  government  to  take  charge  of  im 
provements  which  would  benefit  one  state  only, 
Benton  was  nevertheless  careful  to  reserve  to 
himself  the  right  to  support  measures  for  im 
proving  national  rivers  or  harbors  yielding  rev 
enues.  The  trouble  is,  that  however  much  the 
two  classes  of  cases  may  differ  in  point  of  ex 
pediency,  they  overlap  so  completely  that  it 
is  wholly  impossible  to  draw  a  hard  and  fast 
line  between  them,  and  the  question  of  consti 
tutionality,  if  waived  in  the  one  instance,  can 
scarcely  with  propriety  be  raised  in  the  other. 
With  the  close  of  Monroe's  second  term  the 
"era  of  good  feeling"  came  to  an. end,  and  the 
great  Democratic-Republican  party  split  up  into 
several  fragments,  which  gradually  crystallized 
round  two  centres.  But  in  1824  this  process 
was  still  incomplete,  and  the  presidential  elec 
tion  of  that  year  was  a  simple  scramble  be 
tween  four  different  candidates,  —  Jackson, 
Adams,  Clay,  and  Crawford.  Jackson  had  the 
greatest  number  of  votes,  but  as  no  one  had 


CO  THOMAS   HART   RENT6N. 

a,  majority,  the  election  was  thrown  into  the 
House  of  Representatives,  where  the  ("lay  men, 
inasmuch  as  their  candidate  was  out  of  the  race, 
went  over  to  Adams  and  elected  him.  Benton 
at  the  time,  and  afterwards  in  his  "  Thirty 
Years'  View,"  inveighed  against  this  choice  as 
being  a  violation  of  what  lie  called  the  "  prin 
ciple  demos  krateo"  —a  barbarous  phrase  for 
which  he  had  a  great  fondness,  and  which  he 
used  and  misused  on  every  possible  occasion, 
whether  in  speaking  or  writing.  He  insisted 
that,  as  Jackson  had  secured  the  majority  of 
the  electoral  vote,  it  was  the  duty  of  the  House 
of  Representatives  to  ratify  promptly  this 
"  choice  of  the  people."  The  Constitution  ex 
pressly  provided  that  this  need  not  be  done. 
So  Benton,  who  on  questions  of  state  rights 
and  internal  improvements  was  so  pronounced 
a  stickler  for  a  strict  construction  o£  the  Con 
stitution,  here  coolly  assumed  the  absurd  posi 
tion  that  the  Constitution  was  wrong  on  this 
particular  point,  and  should  be  disregarded,  on 
the  ground  that  there  was  n  struggle  u  between 
the  theory  of  the  Constitution  and  the  demo 
cratic  principle."  His  proposition  was  ridicu 
lous.  The  "  democratic  principle  "  had  nothing 
more  to  do  with  the  matter  than  had  the  law 
of  gravitation.  Either  the  Constitution  was  or 
it  was  not  to  be  accepted  as  a  serious  document, 


EARLY    YEARS   IN   THE  SENATE,  61 

that  meant  something ;  in  the  former  case  the 
election  of  Adams  was  proper  in  every  aspect, 
in  the  latter  it  was  unnecessary  to  have  held 
any  election  at  all. 

At  this  period  every  one  was  floundering 
about  in  efforts  to  establish  political  relations, 
Benton  not  less  than  others  ;  for  he  had  begun 
the  canvass  as  a  supporter  of  Clay,  and  had 
then  gone  over  to  Crawford.  But  at  the  end 
he  had  become  a  Jacksonian  Democrat,  and 
during  the  rest  of  his  political  career  he  figured 
as  the  most  prominent  representative  of  the 
Jacksonian  Democracy  in  the  Senate.  Van 
Buren  himself,  afterwards  Jackson's  prime  fa 
vorite  and  political  heir,  *was  a  Crawford  man 
during  this  campaign. 

Adams,  after  his  election,  which  was  owing 
to  Clay's  support,  gave  Clay  the  position  of 
secretary  of  state  in  his  cabinet.  The  affair 
unquestionably  had  an  unfortunate  look,  and 
the  Jacksonians,  especially  Jackson,  at  once 
raised  a  great  hue  and  cry  that  there  had  been 
a  corrupt  bargain.  Benton,  much  to  his  credit, 
refused  to  join  in  the  outcry,  stating  that  lie 
had  good  and  sufficient  reasons  —  which  he  gave 
—  to  be  sure  of  its  falsity;  a  position  which 
brought  him  into  temporary  disfavor  with  many 
of  his  party  associates,  and  which  a  man  who 
had  Benton's  ambition  and  bitter  partisanship, 


62  THOMAS  HART  BE  NT  ON. 

without  having  his  sturdy  pluck,  would  have 
hesitated  to  take.  The  assault  was  directed 
with  especial  bitterness  against  Clay,  whom 
Jackson  ever  afterwards  included  in  the  very 
large  list  of  individuals  whom  he  hated  with 
the  most  rancorous  and  unreasoning  virulence. 
Randolph  of  Roanoke,  the  privileged  eccentric 
of  the  Senate,  in  one  of  those  long  harangues 
in  which  he  touched  upon  everybody  and  every 
thing,  except  possibly  the  point  at  issue,  made 
a  rabid  onslaught  upon  the  Clay-Adams  coali 
tion  as  an  alliance  of  "  the  blackleg  and  the 
Puritan."  Clay,  who  was  susceptible  enough 
to  the  charge  of  loose  living,  but  who  was  a 
man  of  rigid  honor  and  rather  fond  than  other 
wise  of  fighting,  promptly  challenged  him,  and 
a  harmless  interchange  of  shots  took  place. 
Benton  was  on  the  field  as  the  friend  of  both 
parties,  and  his  account  of  the  affair  is  very 
amusing  in  its  description  of  the  solemn,  hair 
splitting  punctilio  with  which  it  is  evident  that 
both  Randolph  and  many  of  his  contemporaries 
regarded  points  of  dueling  honor,  which  to  us 
seem  either  absurd,  trivial,  or  wholly  incompre 
hensible. 

Two  tolerably  well-defined  parties  now 
emerged  from  the  chaos  of  contending  politi 
cians  :  one  was  the  party  of  the  administration, 
whose  members  called  themselves  National  Re- 


EARLY  YEARS  IN  THE  SENATE.      63 

publicans,  and  later  on  Whigs ;  the  other  was 
the  Jaeksonian  Democracy.  Adams's  inaugural 
address  and  first  message  outlined  the  Whig 
policy  as  favoring  a  protective  tariff,  internal 
improvements,  and  a  free  construction  of  the 
Constitution  generally.  The  Jacksonians  ac 
cordingly  took  the  opposite  side  on  all  these 
points,  partly  from  principle  and  partly  from 
perversity.  In  the  Senate  they  assailed  with 
turgid  eloquence  every  administration  measure, 
whether  it  was  good  or  bad,  very  much  of  their 
opposition  being  purely  factious  in  character. 
There  has  never  been  a  time  when  there  was 
more  rabid,  objectless,  and  unscrupulous  dis 
play  of  partisanship.  Benton,  little  to  his 
credit,  was  a  leader  in  these  purposeless  con 
flicts.  The  most  furious  of  them  took  place 
over  the  proposed  Panama  mission.  This  was 
a  scheme  that  originated  in  the  fertile  brain  of 
Henry  Clay,  whose  Americanism  was  of  a  type 
quite  as  pronounced  as  Benton's,  and  who  was 
always  inclined  to  drag  us  into  a  position  of 
hostility  to  European  powers.  The  Spanish- 
American  States,  having  succeeded  in  winning 
their  independence  from  Spain,  were  desirous  of 
establishing  some  principle  of  concert  in  action 
among  the  American  republics  as  a  whole,  and 
for  this  purpose  proposed  to  hold  an  inter 
national  congress  at  Panama.  Clay's  fondness 


64  THOMAS   HART  BENTON.      , 

for  ii  spirited  and  spectacular  foreign  policy 
made  him  grasp  eagerly  at  the  chance  of  trans 
forming  the  United  States  into  the  head  of  an 
American  league  of  free  republics,  which  would 
be  a  kind  of  cis-Atlantic  offset  to  the  Holy  Al 
liance  of  European  despotisms.  Adams  took 
up  the  idea,  nominated  ministers  to  the  Panama 
Congress,  and  gave  his  reasons  for  his  course  in 
a  special  message  to  the  Senate.  The  adminis 
tration  men  drew  the  most  rosy  and  impossible 
pictures  of  the  incalculable  benefits  which  would 
be  derived  from  the  proposed  congress ;  and  the 
Jacksonians  attacked  it  with  an  exaggerated 
denunciation  that  was  even  less  justified  by  the 
facts. 

Adams's  message  was  properly  open  to  at 
tack  on  one  or  two  points;  notably  in  reference 
to  its  proposals  that  we  should  endeavor  to  get 
the  Spanish- American  States  to  introduce  re 
ligious  tolerance  within  their  borders.  It  was 
certainly  an  unhappy  suggestion  that  we  should 
endeavor  to  remove  the  mote  of  religious  in 
tolerance  from  our  brother's  eye  while  indig 
nantly  resenting  the  least  allusion  to  the  beam 
of  slavery  in  our  own.  It  was  on  this  very 
point  of  slavery  that  the  real  opposition  hinged. 
The  Spanish  States  had  emancipated  their  com 
paratively  small  negro  populations,  and,  as  is 
usually  the  case  with  Latin  nations,  did  riot 


EARLY  YEARS  IN  Till-:  SENATE.      65 

have  a  very  strong  caste  feeling  against  the 
blacks,  some  of  whom  accordingly  had  risen  to 
high  civic  and  military  rank ;  and  they  also 
proposed  to  admit  to  their  congress  the  negro 
republic  of  Hayti.  Certain  of  the  slave-holders 
of  the  South  fiercely  objected  to  any  such  asso 
ciation  ;  and  on  this  occasion  Bentoii  for  once 
led  and  voiced  the  ultra-Southern  feeling  on  the 
subject,  announcing  in  his  speech  that  diplo 
matic  intercourse  with  Hayti  should  not  even 
be  discussed  in  the  senate  chamber,  and  that 
we  could  have  no  association  with  republics 
who  had  "black  generals  in  their  armies  and 
mulatto  senators  in  their  congresses."  But  this 
feeling  on  the  part  of  the  slave-holders  against 
the  measure  was  largely,  although  not  wholly, 
spurious ;  and  really  had  less  to  do  with  the  at 
titude  of  the  Jackson ian  Democrats  than  had 
a  mere  factious  opposition  to  Adams  and  Clay. 
This  was  shown  by  the  vote  on  the  confirmation 
of  the  ministers,  when  the  senators  divided  on 
party  and  not  on  sectional  lines.  The  nomina 
tions  were  confirmed,  but  not  till  after  such  a 
length  of  time  that  the  ministers  were  unable  to 
reach  Panama  until  after  the  congress  had  ad 
journed. 

The  Oregon  question  again  came  up  during 
Adams's  term,  the  administration  favoring  the 
renewal  of  the  joint  occupation  convention,  by 


06  TJJO^fAS   If  ART  BENTON. 

wliich  we  held  the  country  in  common  with 
Great  Britain.  There  was  not  much  public 
feeling  in  the  matter ;  in  the  East  there  was 
none  whatever.  But  Benton,  when  he  opposed 
the  renewal,  and  claimed  the  whole  territory  as 
ours,  gave  expression  to  the  desires  of  all  the 
Westerners  who  thought  over  the  subject  at 
all.  He  was  followed  by  only  half  a  dozen 
senators,  all  but  one  from  the  West,  and  from 
both  sides  of  the  Ohio  —  Illinois,  Kentucky, 
Tennessee,  Mississippi;  the  Northwest  and 
Southwest  as  usual  acting  together. 

The  vote  on  the  protective  tariff  law  of  1828 
furnished  another  illustration  of  the  solidarity 
of  the  West.  New  England  had  abandoned 
her  free  trade  position  since  1824,  and  the 
North  went  strongly  for  the  new  tariff ;  the 
Southern  sea-coast  states,  except  Louisiana,  op 
posed  it  bitterly  ;  and  the  bill  was  carried  by  the 
support  of  the  Western  States,  both  the  free 
and  the  slave.  This  tariff  bill  was  the  first  of 
the  immediate  irritating  causes  which  induced 
South  Carolina  to  go  into  the  nullification  move 
ment.  Benton's  attitude  on  the  measure  was 
that  of  a  good  many  other  men  who,  in  their 
public  capacities,  are  obliged  to  appear  as  pro 
tectionists,  but  who  lack  his  frankness  in  stat 
ing  their  reasons.  He  utterly  disbelieved  in 
and  was  opposed  to  the  principle  of  the  bill,  but 


EARLY  YEARS  IN  THE  SENATE.      67 

as  it  had  bid  for  and  secured  the  interest  of 
Missouri  by  a  heavy  duty  on  lead,  he  felt  him 
self  forced  to  support  it ;  and  so  he  announced 
his  position.  He  simply  went  with  his  state, 
precisely  as  did  Webster,  the  latter,  in  follow 
ing  Massachusetts'  change  of  front  and  sup 
porting  the  tariff  of  1828,  turning  a  full  and 
complete  somersault.  Neither  the  one  nor  the 
other  was  to  blame.  Free  traders  are  apt  to 
look  at  the  tariff  from  a  sentimental  stand-point ; 
but  it  is  in  reality  purely  a  business  matter, 
and  should  be  decided  solely  on  grounds  of  ex 
pediency.  Political  economists  have  pretty 
generally  agreed  that  protection  is  vicious  in 
theory  and  harmful  in  practice ;  but  if  the 
majority  of  the  people  in  interest  wish  it,  and 
it  affects  only  themselves,  there  is  no  earthly 
reason  why  they  should  not  be  allowed  to  try 
the  experiment  to  their  hearts'  content.  The 
trouble  is  that  it  rarely  does  affect  only  them 
selves;  and  in  1828  the  evil  was  peculiarly 
aggravated  on  account  of  the  unequal  way  in 
which  the  proposed  law  would  affect  different 
sections.  It  purported  to  benefit  the  rest  of 
the  country,  but  it  undoubtedly  worked  real 
injury  to  the  planter  states,  and  there  is  small 
ground  for  wonder  that  the  irritation  over  it  in 
the  region  so  affected  should  have  been  intense. 
During  Adams's  term  Benton  began  his  fight 


68  THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

for  disposing  of  the  public  lands  to  actual 
settlers  at  a  small  cost.  It  was  a  move  of 
enormous  importance  to  the  whole  West ;  and 
Benton's  long  and  sturdy  contest  for  it,  and  for 
the  right  of  preemption,  entitle  him  to  the 
greatest  credit.  He  never  gave  up  the  struggle, 
although  repulsed  again  and  again,  and  at  the 
best  only  partially  successful ;  for  he  had  to  en 
counter  much  opposition,  especially  from  the 
short-sighted  selfishness  of  many  of  the  North- 
easterners,  who  wished  to  consider  the  public 
lands  purely  as  sources  of  revenue.  He  utterly 
opposed  the  then  existing  system  of  selling  land 
to  the  highest  bidder  —  a  most  hurtful  practice  ; 
and  objected  to  the  establishment  of  an  arbi 
trary  minimum  price,  which  practically  kept  all 
land  below  a  certain  value  out  of  the  market 
altogether.  He  succeeded  in  establishing  the 
preemption  system,  and  had  the  system  of  rent 
ing  public  mines,  etc.,  abolished ;  and  he  strug 
gled  for  the  principle  of  giving  land  outright  to 
settlers  in  certain  cases.  As  a  whole,  his  theory 
of  a  liberal  system  ot  land  distribution  was  un 
doubtedly  the  correct  one,  and  he  deserves  the 
greatest  credit  for  having  pushed  it  as  he  did. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  ELECTION   OF  JACKSON,  AND  THE   SPOILS 
SYSTEM. 

IN  the  presidential  election  of  1828  Jackson 
and  Adams  were  pitted  against  each  other  as 
the  only  candidates  before  the  people,  and  Jack 
son  won  an  overwhelming  victory.  The  fol 
lowers  of  the  two  were  fast  developing  respec 
tively  into  Democrats  and  Whigs,  and  the 
parties  were  hardening  and  taking  shape,  while 
the  dividing  lines  were  being  drawn  more 
clearly  and  distinctly.  But  the  contest  was 
largely  a  personal  one,  and  Jackson's  success 
was  due  to  his  own  immense  popularity  more 
than  to  an}'  party  principles  which  he  was  sup 
posed  to  represent.  Almost  the  entire  strength 
of  Adams  was  in  the  Northeast ;  but  it  is  abso 
lutely  wrong  to  assume,  because  of  this  fact, 
that  the  election  even  remotely  foreshadowed 
the  way  in  which  party  lines  would  be  drawn  in 
the  coming  sectional  antagonism  over  slavery. 
Adams  led  Jackson  in  the  two  slave  states  of 
Maryland  and  Delaware  ;  and  in  the  free  states 
outside  of  New  England  Jackson  had  an  even 


70  THOMAS  HART  BENT  ON. 

greater  lead  over  Adams.  East  of  the  Alle- 
ghanies  it  may  here  and  there  have  been  taken 
as  in  some  sort  a  triumph  of  the  South  over  the 
North ;  but  its  sectional  significance,  as  far  as 
it  had  any,  really  came  from  its  being  a  victory 
of  the  West  over  the  East.  Infinitely  more 
important  than  this  was  the  fact  that  it  repre 
sented  the  overwhelmingly  successful  upheaval 
of  the  most  extreme  democratic  elements  in  the 
community. 

Until  1828  all  the  presidents,  and  indeed  al 
most  all  the  men  who  took  the  lead  in  public 
life,  alike  in  national  and  in  state  affairs,  had 
been  drawn  from  what  in  Europe  would  have 
been  called  the  "upper  classes."  They  were 
mainly  college-bred  men  of  high  social  standing, 
as  well  educated  as  any  in  the  community,  usu 
ally  rich  or  at  least  well-to-do.  Their  subordi 
nates  in  office  were  of  much  the  same  material. 
It  was  believed,  and  the  belief  was  acted  upon, 
that  public  life  needed  an  apprenticeship  of 
training  and  experience.  Many  of  our  public 
men  had  been  able ;  almost  all  had  been  honor 
able  and  upright.  The  change  of  parties  in 
1800,  when  the  Jeffersonian  Democracy  came 
in,  altered  the  policy  of  the  government,  but  not 
the  character  of  the  officials.  In  that  move 
ment,  though  Jefferson  had  behind  him  the  mass 
of  the  people  as  the  rank  and  file  of  his  party, 


THE  ELECTION    OF  JACKSON.  71 

yet  all  his  captains  were  still  drawn  from  among 
the  men  in  the  same  social  position  as  himself. 
The  Revolutionary  War  had  been  fought  under 
the  leadership  of  the  colonial  gentry  ;  and  for 
years  after  it  was  over  the  people,  as  a  whole, 
felt  that  their  interests  could  be  safely  intrusted 
to  and  were  identical  with  those  of  the  descend 
ants  of  their  revolutionary  leaders.  The  classes 
ill  which  were  to  be  found  almost  all  the  learn 
ing,  the  talent,  the  business  activity,  and  the 
inherited  wealth  and  refinement  of  the  country, 
had  also  hitherto  contributed  much  to  the  body 
of  its  rulers. 

The  Jacksonian  Democracy  stood  for  the  re 
volt  against  these  rulers  ;  its  leaders,  as  well  as 
their  followers,  all  came  from  the  mass  of  the 
people.  The  majority  of  the  voters  supported 
Jackson  because  they  felt  he  was  one  of  them 
selves,  and  because  they  understood  that  his 
election  would  mean  the  complete  overthrow  of 
the  classes  in  power  and  their  retirement  from 
the  control  of  the  government.  There  was 
nothing  to  be  said  against  the  rulers  of  the  day ; 
they  had  served  the  country  and  all  its  citizens 
well,  and  they  were  dismissed,  not  because  the 
voters  could  truthfully  allege  any  wrong-doing 
whatsoever  against  them,  but  solely  because,  in 
their  purely  private  and  personal  feelings  and 
habits  of  life,  they  were  supposed  to  differ  from 


72  THOMAS   HART  BENTON. 

the  mass  of  the  people.  This  was  such  an  out 
rageously  absurd  feeling  that  the  very  men  who 
were  actuated  by  it,  or  who,  like  Benton,  shaped 
and  guided  it,  were  ashamed  to  confess  the  true 
reason  of  their  actions,  and  tried  to  cloak  it  be 
hind  an  outcry,  as  vague  and  senseless  as  it  was 
clamorous,  against  "  aristocratic  corruption  "  and 
other  shadowy  and  spectral  evils.  Benton  even 
talked  loosely  of  "  retrieving  the  country  from 
the  deplorable  condition  in  which  the  enlight 
ened  classes  had  sunk  it,"  although  the  country 
was  perfectly  prosperous  and  in  its  usual  state 
of  quiet,  healthy  growth.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  opponents  of  Jackson  indulged  in  talk  al 
most  as  wild,  and  fears  even  more  extravagant 
than  his  supporters'  hopes ;  and  the  root  of 
much  of  their  opposition  lay  in  a  concealed  but 
still  existent  caste  antagonism  to  a  man  of  Jack 
son's  birth  and  bringing  up.  In  fact,  neither 
side,  in  spite  of  all  their  loud  talk  of  American 
Republicanism,  had  yet  mastered  enough  of  its 
true  spirit  to  be  able  to  see  that  so  long  as  pub 
lic  officers  did  their  whole  duty  to  all  classes 
alike,  it  was  not  in  the  least  the  affair  of  their 
constituents  whether  they  chose  to  spend  their 
hours  of  social  relaxation  in  their  shirt-sleeves 
or  in  dress  coats. 

The  change  was  a  great  one  ;  it  was  not  a 
change  of  the  policy  under  which  the  govern- 


THE  ELECTION  OF  JACKSON.       73 

ment  was  managed,  as  in  Jefferson's  triumph, 
but  of  the  men  who  controlled  it.  The  two 
great  democratic  victories  had  little  in  common ; 
almost  as  little  as  had  the  two  great  leaders  un 
der  whose  auspices  they  were  respectively  won, 
—  and  few  men  were  ever  more  unlike  than  the 
scholarly,  timid,  and  shifty  doctrinaire,  who  sup 
planted  the  elder  Adams,  and  the  ignorant,  head 
strong,  and  straightforward  soldier,  who  was  vic 
tor  over  the  younger.  That  the  change  was  the 
deliberate  choice  of  the  great  mass  of  the  people, 
and  that  it  was  one  for  the  worse,  was  then, 
and  has  been  ever  since,  the  opinion  of  most 
thinking  men;  certainly  the  public  service  then 
took  its  first  and  greatest  step  in  that  downward 
career  of  progressive  debasement  and  deteriora 
tion  which  has  only  been  checked  in  our  own 
days.  But  those  who  would,  off-hand,  decry  the 
democratic  principle  on  this  account  would  do 
well  to  look  at  the  nearly  contemporaneous 
career  of  the  pet  heroes  of  a  trans- Atlantic 
aristocracy  before  passing  judgment.  A  very 
charming  English  historian  of  our  day  l  has  com 
pared  Wellington  with  Washington  ;  it  would 
have  been  far  juster  to  have  compared  him 
with  Andrew  Jackson.  Both  were  men  of 
strong,  narrow  minds  and  bitter  prejudices,  with 
few  statesmanlike  qualities,  who,  for  brilliant 

1  Justin  McCarthy. 


74  THOMAS   HART  BENTOX. 

military  services,  were  raised  to  the  highest  civil 
positions  in  the  gift  of  the  state.  The  feeling 
among  the  aristocratic  classes  of  Great  Britain 
in  favor  of  the  Iron  Duke  was  nearly  as  strong 
and  quite  as  unreasonable  as  was  the  homage 
paid  by  their,  homelier  kinsfolk  across  the  At 
lantic  to  Old  Hickory.  Wellington's  military 
successes  were  far  greater,  for  he  had  more 
chances  ;  but  no  single  feat  of  his  surpassed  the 
remarkable  victory  won  against  his  ablest  lieu 
tenant  and  choicest  troops  by  a  much  smaller 
number  of  backwoods  riflemen  under  Andrew 
Jackson.  As  a  statesman  Wellington  may  have 
done  less  harm  than  Jackson,  for  he  had  less  in 
fluence ;  but  he  has  no  such  great  mark  to  his 
credit  as  the  old  Tennessean's  attitude  toward 
the  Nullifiers.  If  Jackson's  election  is  a  proof 
that  the  majority  is  not  always  right,  Welling 
ton's  elevation  may  be  taken  as  showing  that 
the  minority,  or  a  fraction  thereof,  is  in  its 
turn  quite  as  likely  to  be  wrong. 

This  caste  antagonism  was  the  distinguishing 
feature  in  the  election  of  1828,  and  the  partially 
sectional  character  of  the  contest  was  due  to 
the  different  degree  of  development  the  caste 
spirit  had  reached  in  different  portions  of  the 
Union.  In  New  England  wealth  was  quite 
evenly  distributed,  and  education  and  intelli 
gence  were  nearly  universal  ;  so  there  the  an- 


THE  ELECTION  OF  JACKSON.  To 

tagonism  was  slight,  the  bulk  of  the  New  Eng 
land  vote  being  given,  as  usually  before  and 
since,  in  favor  of  the  right  candidate.  In  the 
Middle  States,  on  the  contrary,  the  antagonism 
was  very  strong.  In  the  South  it  was  of  but 
little  political  account  as  between  the  whites 
themselves,  they  all  being  knit  together  by  the 
barbarous  bond  of  a  common  lordship  of  race ; 
and  here  the  feeling  for  Jackson  was  largely 
derived  from  the  close  kinship  still  felt  for  the 
West.  In  the  West  itself,  where  Jackson's 
great  strength  lay,  the  people  were  still  too 
much  on  the  same  plane  of  thought  as  well  as  of 
material  prosperity,  and  the  wealthy  and  culti 
vated  classes  were  of  too  limited  extent  to  ad 
mit  of  much  caste  feeling  against  the  latter; 
and,  accordingly,  instead  of  hostility  to  them,  the 
Western  caste  spirit  took  the  form  of  hostility 
to  their  far  more  numerous  representatives  who 
had  hitherto  formed  the  bulk  of  the  political 
rulers  of  the  East. 

New  England  was  not  only  the  most  ad 
vanced  portion  of  the  Union,  as  regards  intelli 
gence,  culture,  and  general  prosperity,  but  was 
also  most  disagreeably  aware  of  the  fact,  and 
was  possessed  with  a  self-conscious  virtue  that 
was  peculiarly  irritating  to  the  Westerners,  who 
knew  that  they  were  looked  down  upon,  and 
savagely  resented  it  on  every  occasion  ;  and,  be- 


76  THOMAS  HART  BENT  ON. 

sides,  New  England  was  apt  to  meddle  in  affairs 
that  more  nearly  concerned  other  localities. 
Several  of  Benton's  speeches,  at  this  time,  show 
this  irritation  against  the  Northeast,  and  also 
incidentally  bring  out  the  solidarity  of  interest 
felt  throughout  the  West.  In  a  long  and  able 
speech,  favoring  the  repeal  of  the  iniquitous 
"salt  tax,"  or  high  duty  on  imported  salt  (a 
great  hobby  of  his,  in  which,  after  many  efforts, 
he  was  finally  successful),  he  brought  out  the 
latter  point  very  strongly,  besides  complaining 
of  the  disproportionate  lightness  of  the  burden 
imposed  upon  the  Northeast  by  the  high  tariff, 
of  which  he  announced  himself  to  be  but  a 
moderate  adherent.  In  common  with  all  other 
Western  statesmen,  he  resented  keenly  the 
suspicion  with  which  the  Northeast  was  then 
only  too  apt  to  regard  the  West,  quoting  in  one 
of  his  speeches  with  angry  resentment  a  prev 
alent  New  England  sneer  at  ^  the  savages  be 
yond  the  Alleghanies."  At  the  time  we  are 
speaking  of  it  must  be  remembered  that  many 
even  of  the  most  advanced  Easterners  were 
utterly  incapable  of  appreciating  the  almost 
limitless  capacity  of  their  country  for  growth 
and  expansion,  being  in  this  respect  far  behind 
their  Western  brethren ;  indeed,  many  regarded 
the  acquisition  of  any  new  territory  in  the  West 
with  alarm  and  regret,  as  tending  to  make  the 


THE  ELECTION  OF  JACKSON.  77 

Union  of  such  unwieldy  size  that  it  would  break 
of  its  own  weight. 

Benton  was  the  leading  opponent  of  a  pro 
posal,  introduced  by  Senator  Foot  of  Connecti 
cut,  to  inquire  into  the  expediency  of  limiting 
the  sales  of  public  lands  to  such  lands  as  were 
then  in  the  market.  The  limitation  would  have 
been  most  injurious  to  the  entire  West,  which 
was  thus  menaced  by  the  action  of  a  New  Eng- 
lander,  while  Benton  appeared  as  the  champion 
of  the  whole  section,  North  and  South  alike, 
in  the  speech  wherein  he  strenuously  and  suc 
cessfully  opposed  the  adoption  of  the  resolu 
tion,  and  at  the  same  time  bitterly  attacked 
the  quarter  of  the  country  from  which  it  came, 
as  having  from  the  earliest  years  opposed  every 
thing  that  might  advance  the  interests  of  the 
people  beyond  the  Alleghanies.  Webster  came 
to  the  assistance  of  the  mover  of  the  measure 
in  a  speech  wherein,  among  other  things,  he 
claimed  for  the  North  the  merit  of  the  passage 
of  the  Ordinance  of  1787,  in  relation  to  the 
Northwest  Territory,  and  especially  of  the  anti- 
slavery  clause  therein  contained.  _  But  Benton 
here  caught  him  tripping,  and  in  a  very  good 
speech  showed  that  he  was  completely  mistaken 
in  his  facts.  The  debate  now,  however,  com 
pletely  left  the  point  at  issue,  taking  a  bitterly 
sectional  turn,  and  giving  rise  to  the  famous 


78  THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

controversy  between  Hayne,  of  South  Carolina, 
who  for  the  first  time  on  the  floor  of  the  Sen 
ate  announced  the  doctrine  of  nullification,  and 
Webster,  who,  in  response  to  his  antagonist, 
voiced  the  feeling  of  the  Union  men  of  the 
North  in  that  wonderful  and  magnificent  speech 
known  ever  since  under  the  name  of  the  "  Re 
ply  to  Hayne,"  and  the  calling  forth  of  which 
will  henceforward  be  Htiyne's  sole  title  to  fame. 
Benton,  though  himself  a  strong  Union  and 
anti-nullification  man,  was  still  too  excited  over 
the  subject-matter  of  the  bill  and  the  original 
discussion  over  it  to  understand  that  the  debate 
had  ranged  off  upon  matters  of  infinitely  greater 
importance,  and  entirely  failed  to  realize  that 
lie  had  listened  to  the  greatest  piece  of  oratory 
of  the  century.  On  the  contrary,  encouraged 
by  his  success  earlier  in  the  debate,  he  actually 
attempted  a  kind  of  reply  to  Webster,  attack 
ing  him  with  invective  and  sarcasm  as  an  alarm 
ist,  and  taunting  him  with  the  memory  of  the 
Hartford  Convention,  which  had  been  held  by 
members  of  the  Federalist  party,  to  which  Web 
ster  himself  had  once  belonged.  Benton  after 
wards  became  convinced  that  Webster's  views 
were  by  no  means  those  of  a  mere  alarmist,  and 
frankly  stated  that  he  had  been  wrong  in  his 
position  ;  but  at  the  time,  heated  by  his  original 
grievance,  as  a  Western  man,  against  New  Eng- 


THE  SPOILS  SYSTEM.  79 

land,  he  failed  entirely  to  understand  the  true 
drift  of  Hayne's  speech.  Much  of  New  Eng 
land's  policy  to  the  West  was  certainly  exces 
sively  narrow-minded. 

Jackson's  administration  derives  a  most  un 
enviable  notoriety  as  being  the  one  under  which 
the  "  spoils  system  "  became,  for  the  first  time, 
grafted  on  the  civil  service  of  the  nation ;  ap 
pointments  and  removals  in  the  public  service 
being  made  dependent  upon  political  qualifica 
tions,  and  not,  as  hitherto,  upon  merit  or  ca 
pacity.  Benton,  to  his  honor,  always  stoutly 
opposed  this  system.  It  is  unfair  to  assert  that 
Jackson  was  the  originator  of  this  method  of 
appointment;  but  he  was  certainly  its  foster- 
father,  and  more  than  any  one  else  is  responsi 
ble  for  its  introduction  into  the  affairs  of  the 
national  government.  Despite  all  the  Eastern 
sneers  at  the  " savages"  of  the  West,  it  was  from 
Eastern  men  that  this  most  effective  method  of 
debauching  political  life  came.  The  Jackscnian 
Democrats  of  the  West,  when  they  introduced 
it  into  the  working  of  the  federal  government, 
simply  copied  the  system  which  they  found  al 
ready  firmly  established  by  their  Eastern  allies 
in  New  York  and  Pennsylvania.  For  many 
years  the  course  of  politics  throughout  the 
country  had  been  preparing  and  foreshadowing 
the  advent  of  the  "  spoils  system."  The  great- 


80  THOMAS    HART   BENT  ON. 

est  single  stroke  in  its  favor  had  been  done  at 

o 

the  instigation  of  Crawford,  when  that  schem 
ing  politician  was  seeking  the  presidency,  and, 
to  further  his  ends,  he  procured  the  passage  by 
Congress  of  a  law  limiting  the  term  of  service 
of  all  public  officials  to  four  years,  thus  turn 
ing  out  of  office  all  the  fifty  thousand  public 
servants  during  each  presidential  term.  This 
law  has  never  been  repealed, every  low  politician 
being  vitally  interested  in  keeping  it  as  it  is, 
and  accordingly  it  is  to  be  found  on  the  statute- 
books  at  the  present  day  ;  and  though  it  has  the 
company  of  some  other  very  bad  measures,  it 
still  remains  very  much  the  worst  of  all,  as  re 
gards  both  the  evil  it  has  done  and  that  which 
it  is  still  doing.  Tins  four  years'  limitation  law 
was  passed  without  comment  or  protest,  every 
one  voting  in  its  favor,  its  probable  working  not 
being  comprehended  in  the  least.  Says  Benton, 
who,  with  all  his  colleagues,  voted  for  it :  "  The 
object  of  the  law  was  to  pass  the  disbursing 
officers  every  four  years  under  the  supervision 
of  the  appointing  power,  for  the  inspection  of 
their  accounts,  in  order  that  defaulters  might 
be  detected  and  dropped,  while  the  faithful 
should  be  ascertained  and  continued.  ...  It  was 
found  to  operate  contrary  to  its  intent,  and  to 
have  become  the  facile  means  of  getting  rid  of 
faithful  disbursing  officers,  instead  of  retaining 


THE  SPOILS  SYSTEM.  81 

them."  New  York  has  always  had  a  low  polit 
ical  standard,  one  or  the  other  of  its  great  party 
and  factional  organizations,  and  often  both  or 
all  of  them,  being  at  all  times  most  unlovely 
bodies  of  excessively  unwholesome  moral  tone. 
Aaron  Burr  introduced  the  "spoils  system" 
into  her  state  affairs,  and  his  methods  were  fol 
lowed  and  improved  upon  by  Marcy,  Wright, 
Van  Buren,  and  all  the  "  Albany  Regency."  In 
1829  these  men  found  themselves  an  important 
constituent  portion  of  the  winning  party,  and 
immediately,  by  the  help  of  the  only  too  will 
ing  Jackson,  proceeded  to  apply  their  system  to 
affairs  at  Washington.  It  was  about  this  time 
that,  in  the  course  of  a  debate  in  the  Senate, 
Marcy  gave  utterance  to  the  now  notorious 
maxim,  "  To  the  victors  belong  the  spoils." 

Under  Adams  the  non-partisan  character  of 
the  public  service  had  been  guarded  with  a 
scrupulous  care  that  could  almost  be  called  ex 
aggerated.  Indeed,  Adams  certainly  went  alto 
gether  too  far  in  his  non-partisanship  when  it 
came  to  appointing  cabinet  and  other  high  of 
ficers,  his  views  on  such  points  being  not  only 
fantastic,  but  absolutely  wrong.  The  colorless 
character  of  his  administration  was  largely  due 
to  his  having,  in  his  anxiety  to  avoid  blind  and 
unreasoning  adherence  to  party,  committed  the 
only  less  serious  fault  of  paying  too  little  heed  to 


82  THOMAS  HART  BE  NT  ON. 

party  ;  for  a  healthy  party  spirit  is  prerequisite 
to  the  performance  of  effective  work  in  American 
political  life.  Adams  was  not  elected  purely 
for  himself,  but  also  on  account  of  the  men  and 
the  principles  that  he  was  supposed  to  repre 
sent  ;  and  when  he  partly  surrounded  himself 
with  men  of  opposite  principles,  he  just  so  fat, 
though  from  the  best  of  motives,  betrayed  his 
supporters,  and  rightly  forfeited  much  of  then1 
confidence.  But,  under  him,  every  public  ser 
vant  felt  that,  so  long  as  he  faithfully  served 
the  state,  his  position  was  secure,  no  matter 
jwhat  his  political  opinions  might  be. 

With  the  incoming  of  the  Jacksonians  all 
this  changed,  and  terribly  for  the  worse.  A 
perfect  reign  of  terror  ensued  among  the  office 
holders.  In  the  first  month  of  the  new  adminis 
tration  more  removals  took  place  than  during 
all  the  previous  administrations  put  together. 
Appointments  were  made  with  little  or  no  at 
tention  to  fitness,  or  even  honesty,  but  solely 
because  of  personal  or  political  services.  Re 
movals  were  not  made  in  accordance  with  any 
known  rule  at  all ;  the  most  frivolous  pretexts 
were  sufficient,  if  advanced  by  useful  politicians 
who  needed  places  already  held  by  capable  in 
cumbents.  Spying  and  tale -bearing  became 
prominent  features  of  official  life,  the  meaner 
office-holders  trying  to  save  their  own  heads  by 


THE  SPOILS  SYSTEM.  83 

denouncing  others.  The  very  best  men  were  un 
ceremoniously  and  causelessly  dismissed;  gray- 
beaded  clerks,  who  had  been  appointed  by  the 
earlier  presidents,  —  by  Washington,  the  elder 
Adams,  and  Jefferson,  —  being  turned  off  at  an 
hour's  notice,  although  a  quarter  of  a  century's 
faithful  work  in  the  public  service  had  unfitted 
them  to  earn  their  living  elsewhere.  Indeed, 
it  was  upon  the  best  and  most  efficient  men  that 
the  blow  fell  heaviest ;  the  spies,  tale-bearers, 
and  tricksters  often  retained  their  positions. 
In  1829  the  public  service  was,  as  it  always  had 
been,  administered  purely  in  the  interest  of  the 
people ;  and  the  man  who  was  styled  the  es 
pecial  champion  of  the  people  dealt  that  service 
the  heaviest  blow  it  has  ever  received. 

Benton  himself  always  took  a  sound  stand  on 
the  civil  service  question,  although  his  partisan 
ship  led  him  at  times  to  defend  Jackson's  course 
when  he  must  have  known  well  that  it  was  in 
defensible.  He  viewed  with  the  greatest  alarm 
and  hostility  the  growth  of  the  "spoils  system," 
and  early  introduced,  as  chairman  of  a  special 
committee,  a  bill  to  repeal  the  harmful  four 
years'  limitation  act.  In  discussing  this  pro 
posed  bill  afterwards,  he  wrote,  in  words  that 
apply  as  much  at  this  time  as  they  did  then : 
u  The  expiration  of  the  four  years'  term  came 
to  be  considered  as  the  termination  and  vacation 


84  THOMAS   HART  BENTON. 

of  all  the  offices  on  which  it  fell,  and  the  crea 
tion  of  vacancies  to  be  filled  at  the  option  of  the 
president.  The  bill  to  remedy  this  defect  gave 
legal  effect  to  the  original  intention  of  the  law 
by  confining  the  vacation  of  office  to  actual  de 
faulters.  The  power  of  the  president  to  dis 
miss  civil  officers  was  not  attempted  to  be  cur 
tailed,  but  the  restraints  of  responsibility  were 
placed  upon  its  exercise  by  requiring  the  cause 
of  dismission  to  be  communicated  to  Congress 
in  each  case.  The  section  of  the  bill  to  that  ef 
fect  was  in  these  words:  That  in  all  nomina 
tions  made  by  the  president  to  the  Senate,  to  fill 
vacancies  occasioned  by  an  exercise  of  the  presi 
dents  power  to  remove  from  office,  the  fact  of  the 
removal  shall  be  stated  to  the  Senate  at  the  same 
time  that  the  nomination  is  made,  with  a  state 
ment  of  the  reasons  for  u'hich  such  officer  may 
have  been  removed.  This  was  intended  to  oper 
ate  as  a  restraint  upon  removals  without  cause." 
In  the  "  Thirty  Years'  View  "  he  again  writes, 
in  language  which  would  be  appropriate  from 
every  advanced  civil  service  reformer  of  the 
present  day,  that  is,  from  every  disinterested' 
man  who  has  studied  the  workings  of  the  "spoils 
system  "  with  any  intelligence  :  — 

I  consider  "sweeping"  removals,  as  now  practiced 
by  both  parties,  a  great  political  evil  in  our  country, 
injurious  to  individuals,  to  the  public  service,  to  the 


THE  SPOILS  SYSTEM.  85 

purity  of  elections,  and  to  the  harmony  and  union  of 
the  people.  Certainly  no  individual  has  a  right  to 
an  office ;  no  one  has  an  estate  or  property  in  a  public 
employment ;  but  when  a  mere  ministerial  worker  in 
a  subordinate  station  has  learned  its  duties  by  ex 
perience  and  approved  his  fidelity  by  his  conduct,  it 
is  an  injury  to  the  public  service  to  exchange  him  for 
a  novice  whose  only  title  to  the  place  may  be  a  po 
litical  badge  or  partisan  service.  It  is  exchanging 
^experience  for  inexperience,  tried  ability  for  untried, 
ancfdestroying  the  incentive  to  good  conduct  by  de 
stroying  its  reward.  To  the  party  displaced  it  is  an 
injury,  he  having  become  a  proficient  in  that  busi 
ness,  expecting  to  remain  in  it  during  good  behavior, 
and  finding  it  difficult,  at  an  advanced  age,  and  with 
fixed  habits,  to  begin  a  new  career  in  some  new  walk 
of  life.  It  converts  elections  into  scrambles  for  of 
fice,  and  degrades  the  government  into  an  office  for 
rewards  and  punishments ;  and  divides  the  people  of 
the  Union  into  two  adverse  parties,  each  in  its  turn, 
and  as  it  becomes  dominant,  to  strip  and  proscribe 
the  other. 

Benton  had  now  taken  the  position  which  he 
was  for  many  years  to  hold,  as  the  recognized 
senatorial  leader  of  a  great  and  well-defined 
party.  Until  1828  the  prominent  political 
chiefs  of  the  nation  had  either  been  its  presi 
dents,  or  had  been  in  the  cabinets  of  these  presi 
dents.  But  after  Jackson's  time  they  were  in 


86  THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

the  Senate,  and  it  was  on  this  body  that  public 
attention  was  concentrated.  Jackson's  cabinet 
itself  showed  such  a  falling  off,  when  compared 
with  the  cabinets  of  any  of  his  predecessors,  as 
to  justify  the  caustic  criticism  that,  when  ho 
took  office,  there  came  in  "the  millennium  of 
the  minnows."  In  the  Senate,  on  the  contrary, 
there  were  never  before  or  since  so  many  men 
of  commanding  intellect  and  powers.  Calhoun 
had  been  elected  as  vice-president  on  the  Jack- 
sonian  ticket,  and  was  thus,  in  1829,  presiding 
over  the  body  of  which  he  soon  became  an  act 
ive  member;  Webster  and  Clay  were  already 
taking  their  positions  as  the  leaders  of  the  great 
National  Republican,  or,  as  it  was  afterwards 
called,  Whig  party. 

When  the  rupture  between  Calhoun  and  the 
Jacksonian  Democrats,  and  the  resignation  of 
the  former  from  the  vice-presidency  took  place, 
three  parties  developed  in  the  United  States 
Senate.  One  was  composed  of  the  Jacksonian 
Democrats,  with  Benton  at  their  head  ;  one  was 
made  up  of  the  little  band  of  Nullifiers,  led  by 
Calhoun  ;  and  the  third  included  the  rather  loose 
array  of  the  Whigs,  under  Clay  and  Webster. 
The  feeling  of  the  Jacksonians  towards  Cal 
houn  and  the  Nullifiers  and  towards  Clay  and 
the  Clay  Whigs  were  largely  those  of  persona) 


THE  SPOILS  SYSTEM.  87 

animosity  ;  but  they  had  very  little  of  this  sen 
timent  towards  Webster  and  his  associates, 
their  differences  with  them  being  on  questions 
of  party  principle,  or  else  proceeding  from 
merely  sectional  causes. 


CHAPTER   V. 

THE    STRUGGLE    WITH    THE    NULLIFIEES. 

DURING  both  Jackson's  presidential  terms  lie 
and  liis  adherents  were  engaged  in  two  great 
struggles ;  that  with  the  Nullifiers,  and  that 
with  the  Bank.  Although  these  struggles  were 
in  part  synchronous,  it  will  be  easier  to  discuse 
each  by  itself. 

The  nullification  movement  in  South  Caro 
lina,  during  the  latter  part  of  the  third  and 
early  part  of  the  fourth  decades  in  the  present 
century,  had  nothing  to  do,  except  in  the  most 
distant  way,  with  slavery.  Its  immediate  cause 
was  the  high  tariff ;  remotely  it  sprang  from 
the  same  feelings  which  produced  the  Virginia 
and  Kentucky  resolutions  of  1798. 

Certain  of  the  Slave  States,  including  those 
which  raised  hemp,  indigo,  and  sugar,  were  high- 
tariff  states  ;  indeed,  it  was  not  till  towards  the 
close  of  the  presidency  of  Monroe  that  there 
had  been  much  sectional  feeling  over  the  policy 
of  protection.  Originally,  while  we  were  a 
purely  agricultural  and  mercantile  people,  free 


THE  STRUGGLE  WITH  THE  NULLIFIERS.  89 

trade  was  the  only  economic  policy  which  oc 
curred  to  us  as  possible  to  be  followed,  the  first 
tariff  bill  being  passed  in  1816.  South  Carolina 
then  was  inclined  to  favor  the  system,  Calhoun 
himself  supporting  the  bill,  and,  his  subsequent 
denials  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding,  dis 
tinctly  advocating  the  policy  of  protection  to 
native  industries ;  while  Massachusetts  then  and 
afterwards  stoutly  opposed  its  introduction,  as 
hostile  to  her  interests.  However,  the  bill  was 
passed,  and  Massachusetts  had  to  submit  to  its 
operation.  After  1816  new  tariff  laws  were 
enacted  about  every  four  years,  and  soon  the 
coast  Slave  States,  except  Louisiana,  realized 
that  their  working  \yas  hurtful  to  the  interests 
of  the  planters.  New  England  also  changed 
her  attitude  ;  and  when  the  protective  tariff  bill 
of  1828  came  up,  its  opponents  and  supporters 
were  sharply  divided  by  sectional  lines.  But 
these  lines  were  not  such  as  would  have  divided 
the  states  on  the  question  of  slavery.  The 
Northeast  and  Northwest  alike  favored  the 
measure,  as  also  did  all  the  Southern  States 
west  of  the  Alleghanies,  and  Louisiana.  It  was 
therefore  passed  by  an  overwhelming  vote, 
against  the  solid  opposition  of  the  belt  of  South 
ern  coast  states  stretching  from  Virginia  to 
Mississippi,  and  including  these  two. 

The  states  that  felt  themselves  harmed  by 


90  THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

the  tariff  did  something  more  than  record  their 
disapproval  by  the  votes  of  their  representatives 
in  Congress.  They  nearly  all,  through  their 
legislatures,  entered  emphatic  protests  against 
its  adoption,  as  being  most  harmful  to  them  and 
dangerous  to  the  Union ;  and  some  accompanied 
their  protests  with  threats  as  to  what  would  be 
done  if  the  obnoxious  laws  should  be  enforced. 
They  certainly  had  grounds  for  discontent.  In 
1828  the  tariff,  whether  it  benefited  the  coun 
try  as  a  whole  or  not,  unquestionably  harmed 
the  South  ;  and  in  a  federal  Union  it  is  most 
unwise  to  pass  laws  which  shall  benefit  one  part 
of  the  community  to  the  hurt  of  another  part, 
when  the  latter  receives  no  compensation.  The 
truculent  and  unyielding  attitude  of  the  ex 
treme  protectionists  was  irritating  in  the  ex 
treme  ;  for  cooler  men  than  the  South  Carolin 
ians  might  well  have  been  exasperated  at  such 
an  utterance  as  that  of  Henry  Clay,  when  he 
stated  that  for  the  sake  of  the  "  American  sys 
tem  " —  by  which  title  he  was  fond  of  styling  a 
doctrine  already  ancient  in  mediaeval  times  —  he 
would  "  defy  the  South,  the  president  and  the 
devil." 

On  the  other  hand,  both  the  good  and  the 
evil  effects  of  the  tariff  were  greatly  exagger 
ated.  Some  harm  to  the  planter  states  was 
doubtless  caused  by  it ;  but  their  falling  back, 


THE  STRUGGLE    WITH   THE  NULLIFIERS.      91 

as  compared  with  the  North,  in  the  race  for  pros 
perity,  was  doubtless  caused  much  more  by  the 
presence  of  slavery,  as  Dallas,  of  Pennsylvania, 
pointed  out  in  the  course  of  some  very  temper 
ate  and  moderate  remarks  in  the  Senate.  Clay's 
assertions  as  to  what  the  tariff  had  done  for 
the  West  were  equally  ill-founded,  as  Benton 
showed  in  a  good  speech,  wherein  he  described 
picturesquely  enough  the  industries  and  gen 
eral  condition  of  his  portion  -of  the  country,  and 
asserted  with  truth  that  its  revived  prosperity 
was  due  to  its  own  resources,  entirely  indepen 
dent  of  federal  aid  or  legislation.  He  said :  4t  I 
do  not  think  we  are  indebted  to  the  high  tariff 
for  our  fertile  lands  and  our  navigable  rivers ; 
and  I  am  certain  we  are  indebted  to  these  bless 
ings  for  the  prosperity  we  enjoy."  "  In  all  that 
conies  from  the  soil  the  people  of  the  West  are 
rich.  They  have  an  abundant  supply  of  food 
for  man  and  beast,  and  a  large  surplus  to  send 
.abroad.  They  have  the  comfortable  living 
which  industry  creates  for  itself  in  a  rich  soil, 
but  beyond  this  they  are  poor  .  .  .They  have  no 
roads  paved  or  macadamized ;  no  canals  or 
aqueducts;  no  bridges  of  stone  across  the  in 
numerable  streams  ;  no  edifices  dedicated  to 
eternity  ;  no  schools  for  the  fine  arts  ;  not  a 
public  library  for  which  an  ordinary  scholar 
would  not  apologize."  Then  he  went  on  to 


92  THOMAS   HART  BEN  TON. 

speak  of  the  commerce  of  the  West  and  its 
exports,  "  the  marching  myriads  of  living  ani 
mals  annually  taking  their  departure  from  the 
heart  of  the  West,  defiling  through  the  gorges 
of  the  Cumberland,  the  Alleghany,  and  the 
Appalachian  mountains,  or  traversing  the  plains 
of  the  South,  diverging  as  they  march,  .  .  .  and 
the  flying  steamboats  and  the  fleets  of  floating 
arks,  loaded  with  the  products  of  the  forest, 
the  farm,  and  the  pasture,  following  the  courses 
of  our  noble  rivers,  and  bearing  their  freights 
to  the  great  city  "  of  New  Orleans. 

Unfortunately  Benton  would  interlard  even 
his  best  speeches  with  theories  of  economics 
often  more  or  less  crude,  and,  still  worse,  with 
a  series  of  classic  quotations  and  allusions  ;  for 
he  was  grievously  afflicted  with  the  rage  for 
cheap  pseudo-classicism  that  Jefferson  and  his 
school  had  borrowed  from  the  French  revolu 
tionists.  Nor  ccTuld  he  resist  the  temptation  to 
drag  in  allusions  to  some  favorite  hobby.  The 
repeal  of  the  salt-tax  was  an  especial  favorite 
of  his.  Pie  was  perfectly  right  in  attacking 
the  tax,  and  deserves  the  greatest  credit  for 
the  persistency  which  finally  won  him  the  vic 
tory.  But  his  associates,  unless  of  a  humor 
ous  turn  of  mind,  must  have  found  his  allusions 
to  it  rather  tiresome,  as  when,  apropos  of  the 
commerce  of  the  Mississippi,  and  without  any 


THE  STRUGGLE  WITH  THE  NULLIFIERS.  93 

possible  excuse  for  speaking  of  the  iniquity  of 
taxing  salt,  he  suddenly  alluded  to  New  Or 
leans  as  "  that  great  city  which  revives  upon 
the  banks  of  the  Mississippi  the  name  of  the 
greatest  of  the  emperors1  that  ever  reigned 
upon  the  banks  of  the  Tiber,  and  who  eclipsed 
the  glory  of  his  own  heroic  exploits  by  giving 
an  order  to  his  legions  never  to  levy  a  contri 
bution  of  salt  upon  a  Roman  citizen  ! " 

It  must  be  admitted  that  the  tariff  did  some 
harm  to  the  South,  and  that  it  was  natural  for 
the  latter  to  feel  resentment  at  the  way  in 
which  it  worked.  But  it  must  also  be  re 
membered  that  no  law  can  be  passed  which 
does  not  distribute  its  benefits  more  or  less 
unequally,  and  which  does  not,  in  all  proba 
bility,  work  harm  in  some  cases.  Moreover, 
the  South  was  estopped  from  complaining  of 
one  section  being  harmed  by  a  law  that  bene 
fited,  or  was  supposed  to  benefit,  the  country  at 
large,  by  her  position  in  regard  to  the  famous 
embargo  and  non-intervention  acts.  These  in 
flicted  infinitely  more  damage  and  loss  in  New 
England  than  any  tariff  law  could  inflict  on 
South  Carolina,  and,  moreover,  were  put  into 
execution  on  account  of  a  quarrel  with  Eng 
land  forced  on  by  the  West  and  South  contrary 
to  the  desire  of  the  East.  Yet  the  Southern- 

1  Aurelinn. 


94  THOMAS   HART  BE  NT  ON. 

ers  were  fierce  in  their  denunciations  of  such 
of  the  Federalists  as  went  to  the  extreme  in 
opposition  to  them.  Even  in  1816  Massachu 
setts  had  been  obliged  to  submit  with  good 
grace  to  the  workings  of  a  tariff  which  she 
deemed  hostile  to  her  interests,  and  which  many 
Southerners  then  advocated.  Certainly,  even  if 
the  new  tariff  laws  were  ill-advised,  unjust,  and 
unequal  in  their  working,  yet  they  did  not,  in 
the  most  remote  degree,  justify  any  effort  to 
break  up  the  Union  ;  especially  the  South  bad 
no  business  to  complain  when  she  herself  had 
joined  in  laying  heavier  burdens  on  the  shoul 
ders  of  New  England. 

Complain  she  did,  however ;  and  soon  added 
threats  to  complaints,  and  was  evidently  ready 
to  add  acts  to  threats.  Georgia,  at  first,  took 
the  lead  in  denunciation  ;  but  South  Carolina 
soon  surpassed  her,  and  finally  went  to  the 
length  of  advocating  and  preparing  for  separa 
tion  from  the  Union  ;  a  step  that  produced  a 
revulsion  of  feeling  even  among  her  fellow  anti- 
tariff  states.  The  South  Carolinian  statesmen 
now  proclaimed  the  doctrine  of  nullification, — 
that  is,  proclaimed  that  if  any  state  deemed  a 
federal  law  improper,  it  could  proceed  to  de 
clare  that  law  null  and  void  so  far  as  its  own 
territory  was  concerned,  —  and,  as  a  corollary, 
that  it  had  the  right  forcibly  to  prevent  execu- 


THE  STRUGGLE   WITH   THE  XULL1FIERS.      95 

tion  of  this  void  law  within  its  borders.  This 
was  proclaimed,  not  as  an  exercise  of  the  right 
of  revolution,  which,  in  the  last  resort,  belongs, 
of  course,  to  every  community  and  class,  but  as 
a  constitutional  privilege.  Jefferson  was  quoted 
as  the  father  of  the  idea,  and  the  Kentucky 
resolutions  of  1798—99,  which  he  drew,  were 
cited  as  the  precedent  for  the  South  Caroli 
nian  action.  In  both  these  last  assertions 
the  Nullifiers  were  correct.  Jefferson  was  the 
father  of  nullification,  and  therefore  of  seces 
sion.  He  used  the  word  "  nullify  "  in  the  orig 
inal  draft  which  he  supplied  to  the  Kentucky 
legislature,  and  though  that  body  struck  it  out 
of  the  resolutions  which  they  passed  in  1798, 
they  inserted  it  in  those  of  the  following  year. 
This  was  done  mainly  as  an  unscrupulous  party 
move  on  Jefferson's  part,  and  when  his  side 
came  into  power  he  became  a  firm  upholder  of 
the  Union  ;  and,  being  constitutionally  unable 
to  put  a  proper  value  on  truthfulness,  he  even 
denied  that  his  resolutions  could  be  construed 
to  favor  nullification  —  though  they  could  by  no 
possibility  be  construed  to  mean  anything  else. 
At  this  time  it  is  not  necessary  to  discuss 
nullification  as  a  constitutional  dogma ;  it  is  an 
absurdity  too  great  to  demand  serious  refuta 
tion.  The  United  States  has  the  same  right  to 
protect  itself  from  death  by  nullification,  seces- 


96  THOMAS   HART  BEN  TON. 

sion,  or  rebellion,  that  a  man  has  to  protect 
himself  from  death  by  assassination.  Calhoun's 
hair-splitting  and  metaphysical  disquisitions  on 
the  constitutionality  of  nullification  have  now 
little  more  practical  interest  than  have  the  ex 
traordinary  arguments  and  discussions  of  the 
school-men  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

But  at  the  time  they  were  of  vital  interest, 
for  they  were  words  which  it  was  known  South 
Carolina  was  prepared  to  back  up  by  deeds. 
Calhoun  was  vice-president,  the  second  officer 
in  the  federal  government,  and  yet  also  the 
avowed  leader  of  the  most  bitter  disunionists. 
His  state  supported  him  by  an  overwhelming 
majority,  although  even  within  its  own  borders 
there  was  an  able  opposition,  headed  by  the 
gallant  and  loyal  family  of  the  Draytons,  —  the 
same  family  that  afterwards  furnished  the  cap 
tain  of  Farragut's  flag-ship,  the  glorious  old 
Hartford.  There  was  a  strong  sentiment  in  the 
other  Southern  States  in  his  favor ;  the  public 
men  of  South  Carolina  made  speech  after  speech 
goading  him  on  to  take  even  more  advanced 
ground. 

In  Washington  the  current  at  first  seemed 
to  be  all  setting  in  favor  of  the  Nullifiers  ;  they 
even  counted  on  Jackson's  support,  as  he  was 
a  Southerner  and  a  states'-rights  man.  But  he 
was  also  a  strong  Unionist,  and,  moreover,  at 


THE  STRUGGLE  WITH  THE  NULLIFIERS.     97 

this  time,  felt  very  bitterly  towards  Calhoun, 
with  whom  he  had  just  had  a  split,  and  had  in 
consequence  remodeled  his  cabinet,  thrusting 
out  all  Calhoun's  supporters,  and  adopting  Van 
Buren  as  his  political  heir,  —  the  position  which 
it  was  hitherto  supposed  the  great  Carolina 
separatist  occupied. 

The  first  man  to  take  up  the  gauntlet  the 
Nuilifiers  had  thrown  down  was  Webster,  in  his 
famous  reply  to  Hayne.  He,  of  course,  voiced 
the  sentiment  of  the  Whigs,  and  especially  of 
the  Northeast,  where  the  high  tariff  was  re 
garded  with  peculiar  favor,  where  the  Union 
feeling  was  strong,  and  where  there  was  a  cer 
tain  antagonism  felt  towards  the  South.  The 
Jacksonian  Democrats,  whose  strength  lay  in 
the  West,  had  not  yet  spoken.  They  were, 
for  the  most  part,  neither  ultra  protectionists 
nor  absolute  free-traders  ;  Jackson's  early  pres 
idential  utterances  had  given  offense  to  the 
South  by  not  condemning  all  high-tariff  legisla 
tion,  but  at  the  same  time  had  declared  in  favor 
of  a  much  more  moderate  degree  of  protec 
tion  than  suited  the  Whigs.  Only  a  few  weeks 
after  Webster's  speech  Jackson's  chance  came, 
and  he  declared  himself  in  unmistakable  terms. 
It  was  on  the  occasion  of  the  Jefferson  birth 
day  banquet,  April  18,  1830.  An  effort  was 
then  being  made  to  have  Jefferson's  birthday 

7 


98  THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

celebrated  annually ;  and  the  Nullifiers,  rightly 
claiming  him  as  their  first  and  chief  apostle, 
attempted  to  turn  this  particular  feast  into  a 
demonstration  in  favor  of  nullification.  Most 
of  the  speakers  present  were  actively  or  pas 
sively  in  favor  of  the  movement,  and  the  toasts 
proposed  strongly  savored  of  the  new  doctrine. 
But  Jackson,  Benton,  and  a  number  of  other 
Union  men  were  in  attendance  also,  and  when 
it  came  to  Jackson's  turn  he  electrified  the  au 
dience  by  proposing :  "  Our  federal  Union  ;  it 
must  be  preserved."  Calhoun  at  once  answered 
with :  "  The  Union ;  next  to  our  liberty  the 
most  dear ;  may  we  all  remember  that  it  can 
only  be  preserved  by  respecting  the  rights  of 
the  states  and  distributing  equally  the  benefit 
and  burden  of  the  Union."  The  issue  between 
the  president  and  the  vice-president  was  now 
complete,  and  the  Jacksonian  Democracy  was 
squarely  committed  against  nullification.  Jack 
son  had  risen  to  the  occasion  as  only  a  strong 
and  a  great  man  could  rise,  and  his  fe\v,  tell 
ing  words,  finely  contrasting  at  every  point 
with  Calhoun's  utterances,  rang  throughout  the 
whole  country,  and  will  last  as  long  as  our  gov 
ernment.  One  result,  at  least,  the  Nullifiers 
accomplished,  —  they  completely  put  an  end  to 
the  Jefferson  birthday  celebrations. 

The  South  Carolinians  had   no  intention  of 


THE  STRUGGLE  WITH  THE  NULLIFIERS.   99 

flinching  from  the  contest  which  they  had  pro 
voked,  even  when  they  saw  that  the  North  and 
West  were  united  against  them,  and  though 
the  tide  began  to  set  the  same  way  in  their  sis 
ter  states  of  the  South ;  North  Carolina,  among 
the  latter,  being  the  first  and  most  pronounced 
in  her  support  of  the  president  and  denunci 
ation  of  the  Nullifiers.  The  men  of  the  Pal 
metto  State  have  always  ranked  high  for  hot 
headed  courage,  and  they  soon  showed  that 
they  had  wills  as  fiery  as  that  of  Jackson  him 
self.  Yet  in  the  latter  they  had  met  an  antag 
onist  well  worthy  of  any  foeman's  steel.  In 
declining  an  invitation  to  be  present  at  Charles 
ton,  on  July  4, 1831,  the  president  again  defined 
most  clearly  his  position  in  favor  of  the  Union, 
and  his  words  had  an  especial  significance  be 
cause  he  let  ifc  be  seen  that  he  was  fully  deter 
mined  to  back  them  up  by  force  if  necessary. 
But  his  letter  only  had  the  effect  of  inflaming 
still  more  the  minds  of  the  South  Carolinians. 
The  prime  cause  of  irritation,  the  tariff,  still 
remained  ;  and  in  1832,  Clay,  having  entered 
tho  Senate  after  a  long  retirement  from  poli 
tics,  put  the  finishing  stroke  to  their  anger  by 
procuring  the  passage  of  a  new  tariff  bill,  which 
left  the  planter  states  almost  as  badly  off  as  did 
the  law  of  1828.  Jackson  signed  this,  although 
not  believing  that  it  went  far  enough  in  the 
reduction  of  duties. 


100         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

In  the  presidential  election  of  1832,  Jackson 
defeated  Clay  by  an  enormous  majority ;  Van 
Buren  was  elected  vice-president,  there  being 
thus  a  Northern  man  on  the  ticket.  South 
Carolina  declined  to  take  part  in  the  election, 
throwing  away  her  vote.  Again,  it  must  be 
kept  in  mind  that  the  slave  question  did  not 
shape,  or,  indeed,  enter  into  this  contest  at  all, 
directly,  although  beginning  to  be  present  in 
the  background  as  a  source  of  irritation.  In 
1832  there  was  ten-fold  more  feeling  in  the 
North  against  Masonry,  and  secret  societies 
generally,  than  there  was  against  slavery. 

Benton  threw  himself  in,  heart  and  soul,  with 
the  Union  party,  acting  as  Jackson's  right-hand 
man  throughout  the  contest  with  South  Caro- 

O 

lina,  and  showing  an  even  more  resolute  and  un 
flinching  front  than  Old  Hickory  himself.  No 
better  or  trustier  ally  than  the  Missouri  states 
man,  in  a  hard  fight  for  a  principle,  could  be 
desired.  He  was  intensely  national  in  all  his 
habits  of  thought ;  he  took  a  deep,  personal 
pride  in  all  his  country,  —  North,  South,  East, 
and  West.  He  had  been  very  loath  to  believe 
that  any  movement  hostile  to  the  Union  was 
really  on  foot ;  but  once  thoroughly  convinced 
of  it  he  chose  his  own  line  of  action  without  an 
instant's  hesitation. 

A  fortnight   after    the    presidential  election 


THE  STRUGGLE   WITH  THE  NULLIF1ERS.    101 

South  Carolina  passed  her  ordinance  of  nullifi 
cation,  directed  against  the  tariff  laws  generally, 
and  against  those  of  1828  and  1832  in  particu 
lar.  The  ordinance  was  to  take  effect  011  Feb 
ruary  1st ;  and  if  meantime  the  federal  govern 
ment  should  make  any  attempt  to  enforce  the 
laws,  the  fact  of  such  attempt  was  to  end  the 
continuance  of  South  Carolina  in  the  Union. 

Jackson  promptly  issued  a  proclamation 
against  nullification,  composed  jointly  by  him 
self  and  the  great  Louisiana  jurist  and  states 
man,  Livingston.  It  is  one  of  the  ablest,  as 
well  as  one  of  the  most  important,  of  all  Amer 
ican  state  papers.  It  is  hard  to  see  how  any 
American  can  read  it  now  without  feeling  his 
veins  thrill.  Some  claim  it  as  being  mainly  the 
work  of  Jackson,  others  as  that  of  Livingston  ; 
it  is  great  "honor  for  either  to  have  had  a  hand 
in  its  production.  " 

In  his  annual  message  the  president  merely 
referred,  in  passing,  to  the  Nullifiers,  expressing 
his  opinion  that  the  action  in  reducing  the  du 
ties,  which  the  extinction  of  the  public  debt 
would  permit  and  require,  would  put  an  end  to 
the  proceedings.  As  matters  grew  more  threat 
ening,  however,  Seuth  Carolina  making  every 
preparation  for  war  and  apparently  not  being 
conciliated  in  the  least  by  the  evident  desire  in 
Congress  to  meet  her  more  than  half-way  on 


102  THOMAS  HART  BENT  ON. 

the  tariff  question,  Jackson  sent  a  special  mes 
sage  to  both  houses.  He  had  already  sent  Gen 
eral  Scott  to  Charleston,  and  had  begun. the 
concentration  of  certain  military  and  naval 
forces  in  or  near  the  state  boundaries.  lie  now 
asked  Congress  to  pass  a  measure  to  enable  him 
to  deal  better  with  possible  resistance  to  the 
laws.  South  Carolina  having  complained  of  the 
oppressed  condition  in  which  she  found  herself, 
owing  to  the  working  of  the  tariff,  Jackson,  in 
his  message,  with  some  humor,  quoted  in  reply 
the  last  Thanksgiving  proclamation  of  her  gov 
ernor,  wherein  he  dilated  upon  the  state's  un 
exampled  prosperity  and  happiness. 

It  must  always  be  kept  in  mind  in  describ 
ing  the  attitude  of  the  Jacksonian  Democrats 
towards  the  Nullifiers  that  they  were  all  along, 
especially  in  the  West,  hostile  to  a  very  high 
tariff.  Jackson  and  Benton  had  always  favored 
a  much  lower  tariff  than  that  established  in 
1828  and  hardly  changed  in  1882.  It  was  no 
change  of  front  on  their  part  now  to  advocate  a 
reduction  of  duties.  Jackson  and  Benton  both 
felt  that  there  was  much  ground  for  South  Car 
olina's  original  complaint,  although  as  strongly 
opposed  to  her  nullification t  attitude  as  any 
Northerner.  Most  of  the  Southern  senators  and 
representatives,  though  opposed  to  nullification, 
were  almost  equally  hostile  to  the  high  tariff  •, 


THE  STRUGGLE  WITH   THE  NULLIFIERS.    103 

and  very  many  others  were  at  heart  in  sym 
pathy  with  nullification  itself.  The  intensely 
national  and  anti-separatist  tone  of  Jackson's 
declaration,  —  a  document  that  might  well  have 
come  from  Washington  or  Lincoln,  and  that 
would  have  reflected  high  honor  on  either, — 
though  warmly  approved  by  Benton,  was  very 
repugnant  to  many  of  the  Southern  Democrats, 
and  was  too  much  even  for  certain  of  the  Whigs. 
In  fact,  it  reads  like  the  utterance  of  some  great 
Federalist  or  Republican  leader.  The  feeling 
in  Congress,  as  a  whole,  was  as  strong  against 
the  tariff  as  it  was  against  nullification  ;  and 
Jackson  had  to  take  this  into  account,  all  the 
more  because  not  only  was  he  in  some  degree 
of  the  same  way  of  thinking,  but  also  many  of 
his  followers  entertained  the  sentiment  even 
more  earnestly. 

Calhoun  introduced  a  series  of  nullification 
resolutions  into  the  Senate,  and  defended  them 
strongly  in  the  prolonged  constitutional  debate 
that  followed.  South  Carolina  meanwhile  put 
off  the  date  at  which  her  decrees  were  to  take 
effect,  so  that  she  might  see  what  Congress 
would  do.  Beyond  question,  Jackson's  firm 
ness,  and  the  way  in  which  he  was  backed  up 
by  Benton,  Webster,  and  their  followers,  was 
having  some  effect.  He  had  openly  avowed  his 
intention,  if  matters  went  too  far,  of  hanging 


104  THOMAS  HART  BEN  TON. 

Calhoun  "higher  than  Hainan."  He  unques 
tionably  meant  to  imprison  him,  as  well  as  the 
other  South  Carolina  leaders,  the  instant  that 
state  came  into  actual  collision  with  the  Union  ; 
and  to  the  end  of  his  life  regretted,  and  with 
reason,  that  he  had  not  done  so  without  waiting 
for  an  overt  act  of  resistance.  Some  historians 
have  treated  this  as  if  it  were  an  idle  threat; 
but  such  it  certainly  was  not.  Jackson  un 
doubtedly  fully  meant  what  he  said,  and  would 
have  acted  promptly  had  the  provocation  oc 
curred,  and,  moreover,  he  would  have  been  sus 
tained  by  the  country.  He  was  not  the  man  to 
weigh  minutely  what  would  and  what  would 
not  fall  just  on  one  side  or  the  other  of  the  line 
defining  treason ;  nor  was  it  the  time  for  too 
scrupulous  adherence  to  precise  wording.  Had 
a  collision  occurred,  neither  Calhoun  nor  his 
colleague  would  ever  have  been  permitted  to 
leave  Washington;  and  brave  though  they  were, 
the  fact  unquestionably  had  much  influence 
with  them. 

Webster  was  now  acting  heartily  with  Ben- 
ton.  He  introduced  a  set  of  resolutions  which 
showed  that  in  the  matters  both  of  the  tariff 
and  of  nullification  his  position  was  much  the 
same  as  was  that  of  the  Missourian.  Unfortu 
nately  Congress,  as  a  whole,  was  by  no  means 
so  stiff-kneed.  A  certain  number  of  Whigs  fol- 


THE  STRUGGLE  WITH  THE  NULLIFIERS.    105 

lowed  Webster,  and  a  certain  number  of  Demo 
crats  clung  to  Benton;  but  most  Southerners 
were  very  reluctant  to  allow  pressure  to  be 
brought  to  bear  on  South  Carolina,  and  many 
Northerners  were  as  willing  to  compromise  as 
Henry  Clay  himself.  In  accordance  with  Jack 
son's  recommendations  two  bills  were  intro 
duced:  one  the  so-called  "Force  bill,"  to  allow 
the  president  to  take  steps  to  defend  the  federal 
authority  in  the  event  of  actual  collision  ;  and 
the  other  a  moderate,  and,  on  the  whole,  proper 
tariff  bill,  to  reduce  protective  duties.  Both 
were  introduced  by  administration  supporters. 
Benton  and  Webster  warmly  sustained  the 
"Force  bill,"  which  was  bitterly  attacked  by 
the  Nullifiers  and  by  most  of  the  Southerners, 
who  really  hardly  knew  what  stand  to  take,, 
the  leading  opponent  being  Tyler  of  Virginia, 
whose  disunion  attitude  was  almost  as  clearly 
marked  as  that  of  Calhoun  himself.  Ths  meas 
ure  was  eminently  just,  and  was  precisely  what 
the  crisis  demanded  ;  and  the  Senate  finally 
passed  it  and  sent  it  to  the  House. 

All  this  time  an  obstinate  struggle  was  going 
on  over  the  tariff  bill.  Calhoun  and  his  sym 
pathizers  were  beginning  to  see  that  there  was 
real  danger  ahead,  alike  to  themselves,  their 
constituents,  and  their  principles,  if  they  fol 
lowed  unswervingly  the  course  they  had  laid 


106         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

down  ;  and  the  weak-kneed  brethren  on  the 
other  side,  headed  by  Clay,  were  becoming  even 
more  uneasy.  Calhoun  wished  to  avert  collision 
with  the  federal  government;  Clay  was  quite  as 
anxious  to  avoid  an  outbreak  in  the  South  and 
to  save  what  he  could  of  the  protective  system, 
which  was  evidently  doomed.  Calhoun  was 
willing  to  sacrifice  some  of  his  constitutional 
theories  in  regard  to  protection  ;  Clay  was 
ready  greatly  to  reduce  protection  itself.  Each 
of  them,  but  especially  Clay,  was  prepared  to 
shift  his  stand  somewhat  from  that  of  abstract 
moral  right  to  that  of  expediency.  Benton  and 
Webster  were  too  resolute  and  determined  in 
their  hostility  to  any  form  of  yielding  to  South 
Carolina's  insolent  defiance  to  admit  any  hope 
of  getting  them  to  accept  a  compromise  ;  but 
the  majority  of  the  members  were  known  to  be 
only  too  ready  to  jump  at  any  half-way  measure 
which  would  patch  up  the  affair  for  the  present, 
no  matter  what  the  sacrifice  of  principle  or  how 
great  the  risk  incurred  for  the  future.  Accord 
ingly,  Clay  and  Calhoun  met  and  agreed  on  a 
curious  bill,  in  reality  recognizing  the  protective 
system,  but  making  a  great  although  gradual 
reduction  of  duties ;  and  Clay  introduced  this 
as  a  ''•  compromise  measure."  It  was  substi 
tuted  in  the  House  for  the  administration  tariff 
bill,  was  passed  and  sent  to  the  Senate.  It 


THE  STRUGGLE   WITH  THE  NULLIF1ERS.     107 

gave  South  Carolina  much,  bufc  not  all,  that 
she  demanded.  Her  representatives  announced 
themselves  satisfied,  and  supported  it,  together 
with  all  their  Southern  sympathizers.  Webster 
and  Benton  fought  it  stoutly  to  the  last,  but  it 
was  passed  by  a  great  majority ;  a  few  North 
erners  followed  Webster,  and  Benton  received 
fair  support  from  his  Missouri  colleagues  and 
the  Maryland  senators  ;  the  other  senators, 
Whigs  and  Democrats  alike,  voted  for  the 
measure.  Many  of  the  Southerners  were  im 
bued  with  separatist  principles,  although  not 
yet  to  the  extent  that  Calhoun  was ;  others., 
though  Union  men,  did  not  possess  the  unflinch 
ing  will  and  stern  strength  of  character  that 
enabled  Benton  to  stand  out  against  any  sec 
tion  of  the  country,  even  his  own,  if  it  was 
wrong.  Silas  Wright,  of  New  York,  a  typical 
Northern  "  dough-face "  politician,  gave  exact 
expression  to  the  "  dough-face  "  sentiment,  which 
induced  Northern  members  to  vote  for  the  com 
promise,  when  he  stated  that  he  was  unalter 
ably  opposed  to  the  principle  of  the  bill,  but 
that  on  account  of  the  attitude  of  South  Caro 
lina,  and  of  the  extreme  desire  which  he  had  to 
remove  all  cause  of  discontent  in  that  state,  and 
in  order  to  enable  her  again  to.  become  an  affec 
tionate  member  of  the  Union,  he  would  vote 
for  what  was  satisfactory  to  her,  although  re- 


108        THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

pugnant  to  himself.  Wright,  Marcy,  and  their 
successors  in  New  York  politics,  almost  up  to 
the  present  day,  certainly  carried  cringing  sub 
serviency  to  the  South  to  a  pitch  that  was  fairly 
sublime. 

The  "  Force  bill  "  and  the  compromise  tariff 
bill  passed  both  houses  nearly  simultaneously, 
and  were  sent  up  to  the  president,  who  signed 
both  on  the  same  day.  His  signing  the  com- 

J  O  O 

promise  bill  was  a  piece  of  weakness  out  of 
keeping  with  his  whole  character,  and  espe 
cially  out  of  keeping  with  his  previous  course 
towards  the  Nullifiers.  The  position  assumed 
by  Benton  and  Webster,  that  South  Carolina 
should  be  made  to  submit  first  and  should  have 
the  justice  of  her  claims  examined  into  after 
wards,  was  unquestionably  the  only  proper  atti 
tude. 

Benton  wrote  :  — 

My  objections  to  this  bill,  and  to  its  mode  of  being 
passed,  were  deep  and  abiding,  and  went  far  beyond 
its  own  obnoxious  provisions,  and  all  the  transient 
and  temporary  considerations  connected  with  it.  ... 
A  compromise  made  with  a  state  in  arms  is  a  capitula 
tion  to  that  state.  .  .  .  The  injury  wa&great  then,  and 
a  permanent  evil  example.  It  remitted  the  govern 
ment  to  the  condition  of  the  old  confederation,  acting 
upon  sovereignties  instead  of  individuals.  It  violated 
the  feature  of  our  Union  which  discriminated  it  from 


THE  STRUGGLE   WITH  THE  NULLIF1ERS.    109 

all  confederacies  that  ever  existed,  and  which  was 
wisely  and  patriotically  put  into  the  Constitution  to 
save  it  from  the  fate  which  had  attended  all  con 
federacies,  ancient  and  modern.  .  .  .  The  framers  of 
our  Constitution  established  a  Union  instead  of  a 
League  —  to  he  sovereign  and  independent  within  its 
sphere,  acting  upon  persons  through  its  own  laws 
and  courts,  instead  of  acting  on  communities  through 
persuasion  or  force.  The  effect  of  this  compromise 
legislation  wras  to  destroy  this  great  feature  of  our 
Union  —  to  bring  the  general  and  state  governments 
into  conflict  —  and  to  substitute  a  sovereign  state  for 
an  offending  individual  as  often  as  a  state  chose  to 
make  the  cause  of  that  individual  her  own. 

Not  only  was  Beaton's  interpretation  of  the 
Constitution  sound,  and  one  that  by  the  course 
of  events  has  now  come  to  be  universally  ac 
cepted,  but  his  criticisms  on  the  wisdom  of  the 
compromise  bill  were  perfectly  just.  Had  the 
Anti-Nullifiers  stood  firm,  the  Nullifiers  would 
probably  have  given  way,  and  if  not,  would 
certainly  have  been  crushed.  Against  a  solid 
North  and  West,  with  a  divided  South,  even 
her  own  people  not  being  unanimous,  and  with 
Jackson  as  chief  executive,  South  Carolina 
could  not  have  made  even  a  respectable  resist 
ance.  A  salutary  lesson  then  might  very  pos 
sibly  have  saved  infinite  trouble  and  bloodshed 
thereafter.  But  in  Jackson's  case  it  must  be 


110         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

remembered  that,  so  far  as  his  acts  depended 
purely  upon  his  own  will  and  judgment,  no 
fault  can  be  found  witli  him  ;  he  erred  only  in 
ratifying  a  compromise  agreed  to  by  the  vast 
majority  of  the  representatives  of  the  people  in 
both  houses  of  Congress. 

The  battle  did  not  result  in  a  decisive  victory 
for  either  side.  This  was  shown  by  the  very 
fact  that  each  party  insisted  that  it  had  won  a 
signal  triumph.  Calhoun  and  Clay  afterwards 
quarreled  in  the  senate  chamber  as  to  which 
had  given  up  the  more  in  the  compromise. 
South  Carolina  had  declared,  first,  that  the 
tariff  was  unconstitutional,  and  therefore  to  be 
opposed  upon  principle  ;  second,  that  it  worked 
injustice  to  her  interests,  and  must  be  abol 
ished  forthwith  ;  thirdly,  that,  if  it  wTere  not  so 
abolished,  she  wrould  assert  her  power  to  nullify 
a  federal  law,  and,  if  necessary,  would  secede 
from  the  Union.  When  her  representatives 
agreed  to  the  compromise  bill,  they  abandoned 
the  first  point ;  the  second  was  decided  largely 
in  her  favor,  though  protection  was  not  by  any 
means  entirely  given  up  ;  the  third  she  was  al 
lowed  to  insist  upon  with  impunity,  although 
the  other  side,  by  passing  the  "  Force  bill," 
showed  that  in  case  matters  did  proceed  to  ex 
tremities  they  were  prepared  .to  act  upon  the 
opposite  conviction.  Still,  she  gained  most  of 


THE  STRUGGLE  WITH   THE  NULLfFIERS.     Ill 

that  for  which  she  contended,  and  the  victory, 
as  a  whole,  rested  with  her.  Galilean's  pur 
poses  seem  to  have  been,  in  the  main,  pure ; 
but  few  criminals  have  worked  as  much  harm 
to  their  country  as  he  did.  The  plea  of  good 
intentions  is  not  one  that  can  be  allowed  to 
have  much  weight  in  passing  historical  judg 
ment  upon  a  man  whose  wrong-headedness  and 
distorted  way  of  looking  at  things  produced,  or 
helped  to  produce,  such  incalculable  evil ;  there 
is  a  wide  political  applicability  in  the  remark 
attributed  to  a  famous  Texan,  to  the  effect  that 
he  might,  in  the  end,  pardon  a  man  who  shot 
him  on  purpose,  but  that  he  would  surely  never 
forgive  one  who  did  so  accidentally. 

Without  doubt,  the  honors  of  the  nullification 
dispute  were  borne  off  by  Benton  and  Webster. 
The  latter's  reply  to  Hayne  is,  perhaps,  the 
greatest  single  speech  of  the  nineteenth  cen 
tury,  and  he  deserves  the  highest  credit  for  the 
stubbornness  with  which  he  stood  by  his  colors 
to  the  last.  There  never  was  any  question  of 
Webster's  courage ;  on  the  occasions  when  he 
changed  front  he  was  actuated  by  self-interest 
and  ambition,  not  by  timidity.  Usually  he 
appears  as  an  advocate  rather  than  an  earnest 
believer  in  the  cause  he  represents ;  but  when 
it  came  to  be  a  question  of  the  Union,  he  felt 
what  he  said  with  the  whole  strength  of  his 
nature. 


112  THOMAS  HART  BEN  TON. 

An  even  greater  meed  of  pndse  attaches  to 
Benton  for  the  unswerving  fidelity  which  he 
showed  to  the  Union  in  this  crisis.  Webster 
was  a  high-tariff  man,  and  was  backed  up  by 
all  the  sectional  antipathies  of  the  Northeast  in 
his  opposition  to  the  Nullifiers ;  Benton,  on  the 
contrary,  was  a  believer  in  a  low  tariff,  or  in 
one  for  revenue  merely,  and  his  sectional  an 
tipathies  were  the  other  way.  Yet,  even  when 
deserted  by  his  chief,  and  when  he  was  opposed 
to  every  senator  from  south  of  the  Potomac 
and  the  Ohio,  he  did  not  flinch  for  a  moment 
from  his  attitude  of  aggressive  loyalty  to  the 
national  Union.  He  had  a  singularly  strong 
and  upright  character;  this  country  has  never 
had  a  statesman  more  fearlessly  true  to  his  con 
victions,  when  great  questions  were  at  stake, 
no  matter  what  might  be  the  cost  to  himself, 
or  the  pressure  from  outside,  —  even  when,  as 
happened  later,  his  own  state  was  against  him. 
Intellectually  he  cannot  for  a  moment  be  com 
pared  to  the  great  Massachusetts  senator ;  but 
morally  he  towers  much  higher. 

Yet,  while  praising  Jackson  and  Benton  for 
their  behavior  towards  South  Carolina,  we  can- 
hot  forget  that  but  a  couple  of  years  previously 
they  had  not  raised  their  voices  even  in  the 
mildest  rebuke  of  Georgia  for  conduct  which, 
though  not  nearly  so  bad  in  degree  as  that  of 


THE  STRUGGLE  WITH  THE  NULLIFIERS.  113 

South  Carolina,  wac  of  much  the  same  kind. 
Towards  the  close  of  Adams's  term,  Georgia 
had  bid  defiance  to  the  mandates  of  the  Su 
preme  Court,  and  proceeded  to  settle  the  In 
dian  question  within  her  borders  without  re 
gard  to  the  authority  of  the  United  States,  and 
these  matters  were  still  unsettled  when  Jack 
son  became  president.  Unfortunately  he  let  his 
personal  feelings  bias  him;  and,  as  he  took  the 
Western  and  Georgian  view  of  the  Indian  ques 
tion,  and,  moreover,  hated  the  Supreme  Court 
because  it  was  largely  Federalist  in  its  compo 
sition,  he  declined  to  interfere.  David  Crock 
ett,  himself  a  Union  man  and  a  nationalist  to 
the  back-bone,  rated  Jackson  savagely,  and  with 
justice,  for  the  inconsistency  of  his  conduct  in 
the  two  cases,  accusing  him  of  having,  by  his 
harmful  leniency  to  Georgia,  encouraged  South 
Carolina  to  act  as  she  did,  and  ridiculing  him 
because,  while  he  smiled  at  the  deeds  of  the 
one  state,  when  the  like  acts  were  done  by  the 
other,  "he  took  up  the  rod  of  correction  and 
shook  it  over  her." 

8 


CHAPTER  VI. 

JACKSON    AND    BENTON    MAKE    WAIL    ON    THE 
BANK. 

IF  the  struggle  with  the  Nullifiers  showed 
Benton  at  his  best,  in  the  conflict  with  the 
Bank  he  exhibited  certain  qualities  which 
hardly  place  him  in  so  favorable  a  light.  Jack 
son's  attack  upon  the  Bank  was  a  move  under 
taken  mainly  on  his  own  responsibility,  and  one 
which,  at  first,  most  of  his  prominent  friends 
were  alarmed  to  see  him  undertake.  Benton 
alone  supported  him  from  the  beginning.  Cap 
tain  and  lieutenant  alike  intensely  appreciated 
the  joy  of  battle;  they  cared  for  a  fight  because 
it  was  a  fight,  and  the  certainty  of  a  struggle, 
such  as  would  have  daunted  weaker  or  more 
timid  men,  simply  offered  to  them  an  additional 
inducement  to  follow  out  the  course  they  had 
planned.  Benton's  thorough-going  support  was 
invaluable  to  Jackson.  The  president  sorely 
needed  a  friend  in  the  Senate  who  would  up 
hold  him  through  thick  and  thin,  and  who  yet 
commanded  the  respect  of  all  his  opponents  by 


WAR    OX  THE  BANK.  115 

his  strength,  ability,  and  courage.  To  be  sure, 
Ben  ton's  knowledge  of  financial  economics  was 
not  always  profound ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  a 
thorough  mastery  of  the  laws  of  finance  would 
have  been,  in  this  fight,  a  very  serious  disad 
vantage  to  any  champion  of  Jackson. 

The  rights  and  wrongs  of  this  matter  have 
been  worn  threadbare  in  countless  discussions. 
For  much  of  the  hostility  of  Jackson  and  Ben- 
ton  towards  the  Bank,  there  were  excellent 
grounds ;  but  many  of  their  actions  were  wholly 
indefensible  and  very  harmful  in  their  results 
to  the  country.  An  assault  upon  what  Benton 
called  "  the  money  power  "  is  apt  to  be  popular 
in  a  democratic  republic,  partly  on  account  of 
the  vague  fear  with  which  the  poorer  and  more 
ignorant  voters  regard  a  powerful  institution, 
whose  working  they  do  not  understand,  and 
partly  on  account  of  the  jealousy  they  feel  to 
wards  those  who  are  better  off  than  themselves. 
When  these  feelings  are  appealed  to  by  men 
who  are  intensely  in  earnest,  and  who  are  them 
selves  convinced  of  the  justice  and  wisdom  of 
their  course,  they  become  very  formidable  fac 
tors  in  any  political  contest. 

The  struggle  first  became  important  when 
the  question  of  the  re-charter  of  the  Bank  was 
raised,  towards  the  end  of  Jackson's  first  term, 
the  present  charter  still  having  three  years  to 


116         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

run.  This  charter  had  in  it  many  grave  faults  ; 
and  there  might  well  be  a  question  as  to 
whether  it  should  be  renewed.  The  Bank  it 
self,  beyond  doubt,  possessed  enormous  power ; 
too  much  power  for  its  own  or  outsiders'  good. 
Its  president,  Bid  die,  was  a  man  of  some  abil 
ity,  but  conceited  to  the  last  degree,  untruthful, 
and  to  a  certain  extent  unscrupulous  in  the  use 
lie  made  of  the  political  influence  of  the  great 
moneyed  institution  over  which  he  presided. 
Some  of  the  financial  theories  on  which  he 
managed  the  Bank  were  wrong ;  yet,  on  the 
whole,  it  was  well  conducted,  and  under  its  care 
the  monetary  condition  of  the  country  was 
quiet  and  good,  infinitely  better  than  it  had 
been  before,  or  than,  under  the  auspices  of  the 
Jacksonian  Democracy,  it  afterwards  became. 

The  two  great  reasons  for  Jackson's  success 
throughout  his  political  career  were  to  be  found 
in  the  strength  of  the  feeling  in  his  favor  among 
the  poorer  and  least  educated  classes  of  voters, 
and  in  the  ardent  support  given  him  by  the  low 
politicians,  who,  by  playing  on  his  prejudices 
and  passions,  moulded  him  to  their  wishes,  and 
who  organized  and  perfected  in  their  own  and 
his  interests  a  great  political  machine,  founded 
on  the  "spoils  system";  and  both  the  Jackso 
nian  rank  and  file  and  the  Jacksonian  politi 
cians  soon  agreed  heartily  in  their  opposition 


WAR  ON  THE  BANK.  117 

to  the  Bank.  Jackson  and  Benton  opposed  it 
for  the  same  reasons  that  the  bulk  of  their  fol 
lowers  did ;  that  is  to  say,  partly  from  honest 
and  ignorant  prejudice  and  partly  from  a  well- 
founded  feeling  of  distrust  as  to  some  of  its  ac 
tions.  The  mass  of  their  fellow  party-leaders 
and  henchmen  assailed  it  with  the  cry  that  it 
was  exerting  its  influence  to  debauch  politics, 
while  at  the  same  time  they  really  sought  to 
use  it  as  a  power  in  politics  on  their  own  side. 

Jackson,  in  his  first  annual  message  in  1829, 
had  hinted  that  he  was  opposed  to  the  re-char 
ter  of  the  Bank,  then  a  question  of  the  future 
and  not  to  arise  for  four  or  five  years.  At  the 
same  time  he  had  called  in  question  the  con 
stitutionality  and  expediency  of  the  Bank's 
existence,  and  had  criticised  as  vicious  its  cur 
rency  system.  The  matter  of  constitutionality 
had  been  already  decided  by  the  Supreme  Court, 
the  proper  tribunal,  and  was,  and  had  been  for 
years,  an  accepted  fact;  it  was  an  absurdity  to 
call  it  in  question.  As  regards  the  matter  of 
expediency,  certainly  the  Jackson ians  failed 
signally  to  put  anything  better  in  its  place. 
Yet  it  was  undeniable  that  there  were  grave 
defects  in  the  currency  system. 

The  president's  message  roused  but  little  in 
terest,  and  what  little  it  did  rouse  was  among 
the  Bank's  friends.  At  once  these  began  to 


118  THOMAS  HART  BENT  OX. 

prepare  the  way  for  the  re-charter  by  an  active 
and  extensive  agitation  in  its  favor.  The  main 
bank  was  at  Philadelphia,  but  it  had  branches 
everywhere,  and  naturally  each  branch  bank 
was  a  centre  of  opposition  to  the  president's 
proposed  policy.  As  the  friends  of  the  Bank 
were  greatly  interested,  and  as  the  matter  did 
not  immediately  concern  those  who  afterwards 
became  its  foes,  the  former,  for  the  time,  had  it 
all  their  own  way,  and  the  drift  of  public  opin 
ion  seemed  to  be  strongly  in  its  favor. 

Benton  was  almost  the  only  public  man  of 
prominence  who  tried  to  stem  this  tide  from 
the  beginning.  Jackson's  own  party  associates 
were  originally  largely  against  him,  and  so  he 
stood  all  the  more  in  need  of  the  vigorous 
support  which  he  received  from  the  Missouri 
senator.  Indeed,  it  would  be  unfair  in  the  mat 
ter  of  the  attack  on  the  Bank  to  call  Benton 
Jackson's  follower  ;  he  might  with  more  pro 
priety  be  called  the  leader  in  the  assault,  al 
though  of  course  he  could  accomplish  little  com 
pared  with  what  was  done  by  the  great  popular 
idol.  He  had  always  been  hostile  to  the  Bank, 
largely  as  a  matter  of  Jeffersonian  tradition, 
and  he  had  shown  his  hostility  by  resolutions 
introduced  in  the  Senate  before  Jackson  was 
elected  president. 

Early  in  1831  he  asked  leave  to  introduce  a 


WAR  ON  THE  BANK.  119 

resolution  against  the  re-charter  of  the  Bank ; 
his  purpose  being  merely  to  give  formal  notice 
of  war  against  ifc,  and  to  attempt  to  stir  up  a 
current  of  feeling  counter  to  that  which  then 
seemed  to  be  generally  prevailing  in  its  favor. 
In  his  speech  he  carefully  avoided  laying  stress 
upon  any  such  abstract  point  as  that  of  consti 
tutionality,  and  dwelt  instead  upon  the  ques 
tions  that  would  affect  the  popular  mind ;  as 
sailing  the  Bank  "  as  having  too  much  power 
over  the  people  and  the  government,  over  busi 
ness  and  politics,  and  as  too  much  disposed  to 
exercise  that  power  to  the  prejudice  of  the  free 
dom  and  equality  which  should  prevail  in  a 
republic,  to  be  allowed  to  exist  in  our  country." 
The  force  of  such  an  argument  in  a  popular 
election  will  be  acknowledged  by  all  practical 
politicians.  But,  although  Benton  probably 
believed  what  he  said,  or  at  any  rate  most  of 
it,  he  certainly  ought  not  to  have  opened  the 
discussion  of  a  great  financial  measure  with 
a  demagogic  appeal  to  caste  prejudices.  He 
wished  to  substitute  a  gold  currency  in  the  place 
of  the  existing  bank-notes,  and  was  not  dis 
turbed  at  all  as  to  how  he  would  supply  the 
place  of  the  Bank,  saying:  "I  am  willing  to 
see  the  charter  expire,  without  providing  any 
substitute  for  the  present  Bank.  I  am  willing 
to  see  the  currency  of  the  federal  government 


120  THOMAS  HART  BE  NT  ON. 

left  to  the  hard  money  mentioned  and  intended 
in  the  Constitution  ;  .  .  .  every  species  of  paper 
might  be  left  to  the  state  authorities,  unrecog 
nized  by  the  federal  government !  "  Of  the 
beauties  of  such  a  system  as  the  last  the  coun 
try  later  on  received  practical  demonstration. 
Some  of  his  utterances,  however,  could  be  com 
mended  to  the  friends  of  greenbacks  and  of  dis 
honest  mone}^  even  at  the  present  day,  as  when 
he  says :  "  Gold  and  silver  are  the  best  currency 
for  a  republic ;  it  suits  the  men  of  middle  prop 
erty  and  the  working  people  best ;  and  if  I 
was  going  to  establish  a  workingman's  party  it 
should  be  on  the  basis  of  hard  money  —  a  hard- 
money  party  against  a  paper  party."  The 
Bank  was  in  Philadelphia ;  much  of  the  s-tock 
was  held  in  the  East,  and  a  good  deal  was  held 
abroad,  which  gave  Benton  a  chance  to  play  on 
sectional  feelings,  as  follows:  "  To  whom  is  all 
the  power  granted?  To  a  company  of  private 
individuals,  many  of  them  foreigners,  and  the 
mass  of  them  residing  in  a  remote  and  narrow 
corner  of  the  Union,  unconnected  by  any  sym 
pathy  with  the  fertile  regions  of  the  Great  Val 
ley,  in  which  the  natural  power  of  this  Union 
—  the  power  of  numbers  —  will  be  found  to  re 
side  long  before  the  renewed  term  of  a  second 
charter  would  expire."  Among  the  other  sen 
tences  occurs  the  following  bit  of  pure  dema- 


WAR  ON   THE  BANK.  121 

gogic  pyrotechnics:  "It  [the  Bank]  tends  to 
aggravate  the  inequality  of  fortunes  ;  to  make 
the  rich  richer  and  the  poor  poorer ;  to  multi 
ply  nabobs  and  paupers  ;  and  to  deepen  and 
widen  the  gulf  which  separates  Dives  from 
Lazarus.  A  great  moneyed  power  is  favorable 
to  great  capitalists,  for  it  is  the  principle  of 
money  to  favor  money.  It  is  unfavorable  to 
small  capitalists,  for  it  is  the  principle  of  money 
to  eschew  the  needy  and  unfortunate.  It  is  in 
jurious  to  the  laboring  classes."  Altogether  it 
was  not  a  speech  to  be  proud  of.  The  Senate 
refused  permission  to  introduce  the  resolution 
by  the  close  vote  of  twenty-three  to  twenty. 

Benton  lived  only  a  generation  after  that  one 
which  had  itself  experienced  oppression  from  a 
king,  from  an  aristocratic  legislature  and  from 
a  foreign  power ;  and  so  his  rant  about  the 
undue  influence  of  foreigners  in  our  govern 
mental  affairs,  and  his  declamation  over  the 
purely  supposititious  powers  that  were  presumed 
to  be  conspiring  against  the  welfare  of  the 
poorer  classes  probably  more  nearly  expressed 
his  real  feelings  than  would  be  the  case  with 
the  similar  utterances  of  any  leading  statesman 
nowadays.  He  was  an  enthusiastic  believer  in 
the  extreme  Jeffersonian  doctrinaire  views 'as 
to  the  will  of  the  majority  being  always  right, 
and  as  to  the  moral  perfection  of  the  average 


122  THOMAS  HART  BE  NT  ON. 

voter.  Like  his  fellow-statesmen  he  failed  to 
see  the  curious  absurdity  of  supporting  black 
slavery,  and  yet  claiming  universal  suffrage  for 
whites  as  a  divine  right,  not  as  a  mere  matter 
of  expediency  resulting  on  the  whole  better 
than  any  other  method.  He  had  not  learned 
that  the  majority  in  a  democracy  has  no  more 
right  to  tyrannize  over  a  minority  than,  under 
a  different  system,  the  latter  would  have  to  op 
press  the  former ;  and  that,  if  there  is  a  moral 
principle  at  stake,  the  saying  that  the  voice  of 
the  people  is  the  voice  of  God  may  be  quite  as 
untrue,  and  do  quite  as  much  mischief,  as  the 
old  theory  of  the  divine  right  of  kings.  The 
distinguishing  feature  of  our  American  govern 
mental  system  is  the  freedom  of  the  individual  ; 
it  is  quite  as  important  to  prevent  his  being 
oppressed  by  many  men  as  it  is  to  save  him 
from  the  tyranny  of  one. 

This  speech  on  the  re-charter  showed  a  great 
deal  of  wide  reading  and  much  information  ; 
but  a  good  part  of  it  was  sheer  declamation,  in 
the  turgid,  pompous  style  that  Benton,  as  well 
as  a  great  many  other  American  public  speak 
ers,  was  apt  to  mistake  for  genuine  oratory. 
His  subsequent  speech  on  the  currency,  how 
ever,  was  much  better.  This  was  likewise  deliv 
ered  on  the  occasion  of  asking  leave  to  present 
a  joint  resolution,  which  leave  was  refused, 


WAR  ON   THE  BANK.  123 

The  branch  draft  system  was  the  object  of  the 
assault.  These  branch  drafts  were  for  even 
sums  of  small  denomination,  circulating  like 
bank-notes ;  they  were  drawn  on  the  parent 
bank  at  Philadelphia  to  the  order  of  some  offi 
cer  of  the  branch  bank  and  were  indorsed  by 
the  latter  to  bearer.  Thus  paper  was  issued  at 
one  place  which  was  payable  at  another  and  a 
distant  place  ;  and  among  other  results  there 
ensued  a  constant  inflation  of  credit.  They  were 
very  mischievous  in  their  workings ;  they  had 
none  of  the  marks  of  convertible  bank-notes  or 
money,  and  so  long  as  credit  was  active  there 
could  be  no  check  on  the  inflation  of  the  cur 
rency  by  them.  Payment  could  be  voluntarily 
made  at  the  branch  banks  whence  issued,  but  if 
it  was  refused  the  owner  had  only  the  right  to 
go  to  Philadelphia  and  sue  the  directors  there. 
Most  of  these  drafts  were  issued  at  the  most 
remote  and  inaccessible  branches,  the  payment 
of  them  being,  therefore,  much  delayed  by  dis 
tance  and  difficulty  ;  nor  were  the  directors  lia 
ble  for  excessive  issues.  They  constituted  the 
bulk  of  all  the  paper  seen  in  circulation  ;  they 
were  supposed  to  be  equivalent  to  money,  but 
being  bills  of  exchange  they  were  merely  nego 
tiable  instruments;  they  did  not  have  the  prop 
erties  of  bank-notes,  which  are  constantly  and 
directly  interchangeable  with  money.  In  their 


124        THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

issue  Biddle  had  laid  himself  open  to  attack; 
and  in  defending  them  he  certainly  did  not 
always  speak  the  truth,  willfully  concealing  or 
coloring  facts.  Moreover,  his  self-satisfaction 
and  the  foolish  pride  in  his  own  power,  which 
he  could  not  conceal,  led  him  into  making 
imprudent  boasts  as  to  the  great  power  the 
Bank  could  exercise  over  other  local  banks,  and 
over  the  general  prosperity  of  the  country,  while 
dilating  upon  its  good  conduct  in  not  using 
this  power  to  the  disadvantage  of  the  public. 
All  this  was  playing  into  Benton's  hands.  He 
showed  some  of  the  evils  of  the  branch  draft 
system,  although  apparently  not  seeing  others 
that  were  quite  as  important.  He  attacked  the 
Bank  for  some  real  and  many  imaginary  wrong 
doings  ;  and  quoted  Biddle  himself  as  an  author 
ity  for  the  existence  of  powers  dangerous  to  the 
welfare  of  the  state. 

The  advocates  of  the  Bank  were  still  in  the 
majority  in  both  houses  of  Congress,  and  soon 
began  preparations  for  pushing  through  a  bill 
for  the  re-charter.  The  issue  began  to  become 
political.  Webster,  Clay,  and  most  of  the  other 
anti-administration  men  were  for  the  Bank;  and 
so  when  the  convention  of  the  National  Repub 
licans,  who  soon  afterwards  definitely  assumed 
the  name  of  Whigs,  took  place,  they  declared 
heartily  in  its  favor,  and  nominated  for  the 


WAR  ON  m^^|RNlA.^    125 

presidency  its  most  enthusiastic  supporter, 
Henry  Clay.  The  Bank  itself  unquestionably 
preferred  not  to  be  dragged  into  politics ;  but 
Clay,  thinking  he  saw  a  chance  for  a  successful 
stroke,  fastened  upon  it,  and  the  convention 
that  nominated  him  made  the  fight  against 
Jackson  on  the  ground  that  he  was  hostile  to 
the  Bank.  Even  had  this  not  already  been  the 
case  no  more  certain  method  of  insuring  his 
hostility  could  have  been  adopted. 

Still,  however,  many  of  Jackson's  supporters 
were  also  advocates  of  re-charter  ;  and  the  bill 
for  that  purpose  commanded  the  majority  in 
Congress.  Benton  took  the  lead  in  organizing 
the  opposition,  not  with  the  hope  of  preventing 
its  passage,  but  "  to  attack  incessantly,  assail  at 
all  points,  display  the  evil  of  the  institution, 
rouse  the  people,  and  prepare  them  to  sustain 
the  veto."  In  other  words,  he  was  preparing 
for  an  appeal  to  the  people,  and  working  to 
secure  an  anti-Bank  majority  in  the  next  Con 
gress.  He  instigated  and  prepared  the  investi 
gation  into  the  affairs  of  the  Bank,  which  was 
made  in  the  House,  and  he  led  the  harassing  par 
liamentary  warfare  carried  on  against  the  re- 
chartering  bill  in  the  Senate.  He  himself  seems 
to  have  superintended  the  preparation  of  the 
charges  which  were  investigated  by  the  House. 
A  great  flurry  was  made  over  them,  Benton  and 


120  THOMAS  HART  BEN  TON. 

all  his  friends  claiming  that  they  were  fully 
substantiated ;  but  the  only  real  point  scored 
was  that  against  the  branch  drafts.  Ben  ton, 
with  the  majority  of  the  committee  of  investi 
gation,  had  the  loosest  ideas  as  to  what  a  bank 
ought  to  do,  loud  though  they  were  in  denunci 
ation  of  what  this  particular  Bank  was  alleged 
to  have  done. 

Webster  made  the  great  argument  in  favor 
of  the  re-charter  bill.  Benton  took  the  lead  in 
opposition,  stating,  what  was  probably  true,  — 
that  the  bill  was  brought  up  so  long  before  the 
charter  expired  for  political  reasons,  and  criti 
cising  it  as  premature  ;  a  criticism  unfortunately 
applicable  with  even  greater  force  to  Jackson's 
message.  His  speech  was  largely  mere  talking 
against  time,  and  he  wandered  widely  from  the 
subject.  Among  other  things  he  invoked  the 
aid  of  the  principle  of  states'-rights,  because  the 
Bank  then  had  power  to  establish  branches  in 
any  state,  whether  the  latter  liked  it  or  not,  and 
free  from  state  taxation.  He  also  appealed  to 
the  Western  members  as  such,  insisting  that  the 
Bank  discriminated  against  their  section  of  the 
country  in  favor  of  the  East ;  the  facts  being 
that  the  shrewdness  and  commercial  morality 
of  the  Northeast,  particularly  of  New  England, 
saved  them  from  the  evils  brought  on  the  West 
erners  by  the  foolishness  with  which  they  abused 


WAR  ON  THE  BANK.  127 

their  credit  and  the  laxness  with  which  they 
looked  on  monetary  obligations.  But  in  spite 
of  all  that  Benton  could  do  the  bill  passed  both 
houses,  the  Senate  voting  in  its  favor  by  twenty- 
eight  ayes  against  twenty  nays. 

Jackson,  who  never  feared  anything,  and  was 
more  than  ready  to  accept  the  fight  which  was 
in  some  measure  forced  on  him,  yet  which  in 
some  degree  he  had  courted,  promptly  vetoed 
the  bill  in  a  message  which  stated  some  truths 
forcibly  and  fearlessly,  which  developed  some 
very  queer  constitutional  and  financial  theories, 
and  which  contained  a  number  of  absurdities, 
evidently  put  in,  not  for  the  benefit  of  the  Sen 
ate,  but  to  influence  voters  at  the  coming  presi 
dential  election.  The  leaders  of  the  opposition 
felt  obliged  to  make  a  show  of  trying  to  pass 
the  bill  over  the  veto  in  order  to  get  a  chance 
to  answer  Jackson.  Webster  again  opened  the 
argument.  Clay  made  the  fiercest  onslaught, 
assailing  the  president  personally,  besides  at 
tacking  the  veto  power,  and  trying  to  discredit 
its  use.  But  the  presidential  power  of  veto  is 
among  the  best  features  of  our  government, 
and  Benton  had  no  difficulty  in  making  a  good 
defense  of  it ;  although  many  of  the  arguments 
adduced  by  him  in  its  favor  were  entirely  un 
sound,  being  based  on  the  wholly  groundless 
assumption  that  the  function  of  the  president 


128        THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

corresponded  to  that  of  the  ancient  Roman 
tribune  of  the  people,  and  was  supposed  to  be 
exercised  in  the  interests  of  the  people  to  con 
trol  the  legislature — thus  willfully  overlooking 
the  fact  that  the  legislature  also  was  elected 
by  the  people.  When  on  his  ultra-democratic 
hobby  Benton  always  rode  very  loose  in  the 
saddle,  and  with  little  knowledge  of  where  he 
was  going.  Clay  and  Benton  alike  drew  all 
sorts  of  analogies  between  the  state  of  affairs  in 
the  United  States  and  that  formerly  prevailing 
in  France,  England,  and  above  all  in  the  much- 
suffering  republics  of  antiquity.  Benton  insisted 
that  the  Bank  had  wickedly  persuaded  the  West 
to  get  in  debt  to  it  so  as  to  have  that  section 
in  its  power,  and  that  the  Western  debt  had 
been  created  with  a  view  to  political  engineer 
ing  ;  the  fact  being  that  the  Westerners  had  run 
into  debt  purely  by  their  own  fault,  and  that 
the  Bank  itself  was  seriously  alarmed  at  the 
condition  of  its  Western  branches.  The  cur 
rency  being  in  much  worse  shape  in  the  West 
than  in  the  Northeast,  gold  and  silver  naturally 
moved  towards  the  latter  place  ;  and  this  result 
of  their  own  shortcomings  was  again  held  up  as 
a  grievance  of  the  Westerners  against  the  Bank. 
He  also  read  a  severe  lecture  on  the  interests 
of  party  discipline  to  the  Democrats  who  had 
voted  for  the  re-charter,  assuring  them  that  they 


WAR   ON  THE  BANK.  129 

could  not  continue  to  be  both  for  the  Bank  and 
for  Jackson.  The  Jacksonian  Democracy,  nom 
inally  the  party  of  the  multitude,  was  in  reality 
the  nearest  approach  the  United  States  has  ever 
seen  to  the  "  one  man  power ;  "  and  to  break 
with  Jackson  was  to  break  with  the  Demo 
cratic  party.  The  alternative  of  expulsion  or 
of  turning  a  somersault  being  thus  plainly  pre 
sented  to  the  recalcitrant  members,  they  for 
the  most  part  chose  the  latter,  and  performed 
the  required  feat  of  legislative  acrobatics  with 
the  most  unobtrusive  and  submissive  meekness. 
The  debate  concluded  with  a  sharp  and  undig 
nified  interchange  of  personalities  between  the 
Missouri  and  Kentucky  senators,  Clay  giving 
Benton  the  lie  direct,  and  the  latter  retorting 
in  kind.  Each  side,  of  course,  predicted  the 
utter  ruin  of  the  country,  if  the  other  prevailed. 
Benton  said  that,  if  the  Bank  conquered,  the 
result  would  be  the  establishment  of  an  oli 
garchy,  and  then  of  a  monarchy,  and  finally  the 
death  of  the  Republic  by  corruption.  Webster 
stated  as  his  belief  that,  if  the  sentiments  of 
the  veto  message  received  general  approbation, 
the  Constitution  could  not  possibly  survive  its 
fiftieth  year.  Webster,  however,  in  that  debate, 
showed  to  good  advantage.  Benton  was  no 
match  for  him,  either  as  a  thinker  or  as  a 
speaker ;  but  with  the  real  leader  of  the  Whig 


130         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

party,  Henry  Clay,  he  never  bad  much  cause 
to  fear  comparison. 

All  the  state  banks  were  of  course  rabidly  in 
favor  of  Jackson  ;  and  the  presidential  election 
of  1832  was  largely  fought  on  the  bank  issue. 
In  Pennsylvania,  however,  the  feeling  for  the 
Bank  was  only  less  strong  than  that  for  Jack 
son  ;  and  accordingly  that  Boeotian  community 
sapiently  cast  its  electoral  votes  for  the  latter, 
while  instructing  its  senators  and  representa 
tives  to  support  the  former.  But  the  complete 
and  hopeless  defeat  of  Clay  by  Jackson  sealed 
the  fate  of  the  Bank.  Jackson  was  not  even 
content  to  let  it  die  naturally  by  the  lapse  of 
its  charter.  His  attitude  towards  it  so  far  had 
been  one  for  which  much  could  be  said ;  indeed, 
very  good  grounds  can  be  shown  for  thinking 
his  veto  proper.  But  of  the  impropriety  of  his 
next  step  there  could  be  no  possible  question. 
Congress  had  passed  a  resolution  declaring  its 
belief  in  the  safety  of  the  United  States  depos 
its  in  the  Bank;  but  the  president,  in  the  sum 
mer  of  1833,  removed  these  deposits  and  placed 
them  in  certain  state  banks.  He  experienced 
some  difficulty  in  getting  a  secretary  of  the 
treasury  who  would  take  such  a  step;  finally 
he  found  one  in  Taney. 

The  Bank  memorialized  Congress  at  once ; 
and  the  anti-administration  majority  in  the  Sen- 


WAR  OX  THE  BANK.  131 

ate  forthwith  took  up  the  quarrel.  They  first 
rejected  Jackson's  nominations  for  bank  direc 
tors,  and  then  refused  to  confirm  Taney  him 
self.  Two  years  later  Jackson  made  the  latter 
Chief  Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court,  in  which 
position  he  lived  to  do  even  more  mischief  than 
he  had  time  or  opportunity  to  accomplish  as 
secretary  of  the  treasury. 

Benton  was  the  administration  champion  in 
the  Senate.  Opposed  to  him  were  "Webster  and 
Clay,  as  leaders  of  the  Whigs,  supported  for 
the  time  being  by  Calhoun.  The  feeling  of 
Clay  and  Calhoun  against  the  president  was 
bitterly  personal,  and  was  repaid  by  his  ran 
corous  hatred.  But  Webster,  though  he  was 
really  on  most  questions  even  more  antagonistic 
to  the  ideas  of  the  Jacksonian  school,  always 
remained  personally  on  good  terms  with  its 
leaders. 

Clay  introduced  a  resolution  directing  the 
return  of  the  deposits ;  Benton  opposed  it ;  it 
passed  by  a  vote  of  twenty-eight  to  eighteen, 
but  was  lost  in  the  House.  Clay  then  intro 
duced  a  resolution  demanding  to  know  from  the 
president  whether  the  paper  alleged  to  have 
been  published  by  his  authority  as  having  been 
read  to  the  cabinet,  in  relation  to  the  removal 
of  the  deposits,  was  genuine  or  not ;  and, if  it 
was,  asking  for  a  copy.  Benton  opposed  the 


132         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

motion,  which  nevertheless  passed.  But  the 
president  refused  to  accede  to  the  demand. 
Meanwhile  the  new  departure  in  banking,  in 
augurated  by  the  president,  was  working  badly. 
One  of  the  main  grounds  for  removing  the  de 
posits  was  the  allegation  that  they  were  used 
to  debauch  politics.  This  was  never  proved 
against  the  old  United  States  Bank ;  but  under 
Jackson's  administration,  which  corrupted  the 
public  service  in  every  way,  the  deposits  became 
fruitful  sources  of  political  reward  and  bribery. 
Clay  then  introduced  his  famous  resolution 
censuring  the  president  for  his  action,  and  sup 
ported  it  in  a  long  and  fiery  speech  ;  a  speech 
which,  like  most  of  Clay's,  was  received  by  his 
followers  at  the  time  with  rapture,  but  in  which 
this  generation  fails  to  find  the  sign  of  that  re 
markable  ability  with  which  his  own  contempo 
raries  credited  the  great  Kentuckian.  He  at 
tacked  Jackson  with  fierce  invective,  painting 
him  as  an  unscrupulous  tyrant,  who  was  in 
augurating  a  revolution  in  the  government  of 
the  Union.  But  lie  was  outdone  by  Calhoun, 
who,  with  continual  interludes  of  complacent 
references  to  the  good  already  done  by  the 
Nullifiers,  assailed  Jackson  as  one  of  a  band  of 
artful,  corrupt,  and  cunning  politicians,  and 
drew  a  picture  even  more  lurid  than  Clay's  of 
the  future  of  the  country,  and  the  danger  of 


WAR  ON  THE  BANK.  133 

impending  revolution.  Webster's  speeches  were 
more  self-contained  in  tone.  Benton  was  the 
only  Jacksonian  senator  who  could  contend  with 
the  great  Nullifies  and  the  two  great  Whigs ; 
and  he  replied  at  length,  and  in  much  the  same 
style  as  they  had  spoken. 

The  Senate  was  flooded  with  petitions  in 
favor  of  the  Bank,  which  were  presented  with 
suitable  speeches  by  the  leading  Whigs.  Ben- 
ton  ridiculed  the  exaggerated  tone  of  alarm  in 
which  these  petitions  were  drawn,  and  declared 
that  the  panic,  excitement,  and  suffering  exist 
ing  in  business  circles  throughout  the  country 
were  due  to  the  deliberate  design  of  the  Bank, 
and  afforded  a  fresh  proof  that  the  latter  was  a 
dangerous  power  to  the  state. 

The  resolution  of  censure  was  at  last  passed 
by  a  vote  of  twenty -six  to  twenty,  and  Jack 
son,  in  a  fury,  sent  in  a  written  protest  against 
it,  which  the  Senate  refused  to  receive.  The 
excitement  all  over  the  country  was  intense 
throughout  the  struggle.  The  suffering,  which 
was  really  caused  by  the  president's  act,  but 
which  was  attributed  by  his  supporters  to  the 
machinations  of  the  Bank,  was  very  real ;  even 
Bentori  admitted  this,  although  contending  that 
it  was  not  a  natural  result  of  the  policy  pursued, 
but  had  been  artificially  excited  —  or,  as  he 
very  clumsily  phrased  it,  "  though  fictitious  and 


134  THOMAS   HART  BEN  TON. 

forged,  yet  the  distress  was  real,  and  did  an  im 
mensity  of  damage."  Neither  Jackson  nor  Ben- 
ton  yielded  an  inch  to  the  outside  pressure  ; 
the  hitter  was  the  soul  of  the  fight  in  Con 
gress,  making  over  thirty  speeches  during  the 
struggle. 

During  the  debate  on  receiving  the  presi 
dent's  protest,  Benton  gave  notice  of  his  inten 
tion  at  an  early  day  to  move  to  expunge  from 
the  journal  the  resolution  of  censure.  This 
idea  was  entirely  his  own,  and  he  gave  the 
notice  without  having  consulted  anybody.  It 
was,  however,  a  motion  after  Jackson's  own 
heart,  as  the  hitter  now  began  to  look  upon  the 
affair  as  purely  personal  to  himself.  His  party 
accepted  this  view  of  the  matter  with  a  servile 
alacrity  only  surpassed  by  the  way  in  which  its 
leaders  themselves  bowed  down  before  the  mob  ; 
and  for  the  next  two  years  the  state  elections 
were  concerned  purely  with  personal  politics, 
the  main  point  at  issue  in  the  choice  for  every 
Uniled  States  senator  being,  whether  lie  would 
or  would  not  support  Benton's  expunging  reso 
lution.  The  whole  affair  seems  to  us  so  puerile 
that  we  can  hardly  understand  the  importance 
attached  to  it  by  the  actors  themselves.  But 
the  men  who  happened  at  that  period  to  be  the 
leaders  in  public  affairs  were  peculiarly  and 
frankly  incapable  of  separating  in  their  minds 


WAR  ON  THE  BANK.  135 

matters  merely  affecting  themselves  from  mat 
ters  affecting  their  constituents.  Each  firmly 
believed  that  if  he  was  not  the  whole  state,  he 
was  at  least  a  most  important  fraction  of  it ; 
and  this  was  as  plainly  seen  in  Webster's  colos 
sal  egoism  and  the  frank  vanity  of  Henry  Clay 
as  in  Benton's  ponderous  self-consciousness  and 
the  all-pervading  personality  of  Andrew  Jack 
son. 

Some  of  the  speeches  on  the  expunging  res 
olution  show  delicious,  although  entirely  un 
conscious,  humor.  If  there  ever  was  a  wholly 
irrational  state  of  mind  it  was  that  in  which 
the  Jacksonians  perpetually  kept  themselves. 
Every  canvass  on  Jackson's  behalf  was  one  of 
sound,  fury,  and  excitement,  of  appeal  to  the 
passions,  prejudices,  and  feelings,  but  never  the 
reason,  of  the  people.  A  speech  for  him  was 
generally  a  mere  frantic  denunciation  of  what 
ever  and  whoever  was  opposed  to  him,  coupled 
with  fulsome  adulation  of  "  the  old  hero."  His 
supporters  rarely  indeed  spoke  to  the  cool  judg 
ment  of  the  country,  for  the  very  excellent  rea 
son  that  the  cool  judgment  of  the  country  was 
apt  to  be  against  them.  Such  being  the  case, 
it  is  amusing  to  read  in  Benton's  speech  on  re^ 
ceiving  the  protest  the  following  sentences,  ap 
parently  uttered  in  solemn  good  faith,  and  with 
sublime  unconsciousness  of  irony  :  — 


133         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

To  such  a  community  [the  American  body  poli 
tic]  —  in  an  appeal  on  a  great  question  of  constitu 
tional  law  to  the  understandings  of  such  a  people  — 
declamation,  passion,  epithets,  opprobrious  language, 
will  stand  for  nothing.  They  will  float  harmless  and 
unheeded  through  the  empty  air,  and  strike  in  vain 
upon  the  ear  of  a  sober  and  dispassionate  tribunal. 
Indignation,  real  or  affected ;  wrath,  however  hot ; 
fury,  however  enraged  ;  asseverations,  however  vio 
lent  ;  denunciation,  however  furious,  will  avail  noth 
ing.  Facts,  inexorable  facts,  are  all  that  will  be  at 
tended  to;  reason,  calm  and  self-possessed,  is  all 
that  will  be  listened  to. 

The  description  of  the  mass  of  Jacksonian 
voters  as  forming  "  a  sober  and  dispassionate 
tribunal "  is  an  artistic  touch  of  fancy  quite 
unique,  but  admirably  characteristic  of  Benton, 
whose  statements  always  rose  vigorously  to  the 
necessities  of  the  occasion. 

Webster,  in  an  effort  to  make  the  best  of  un 
toward  circumstances,  brought  in  a  bill  to  re- 
charter  the  Bank  for  a  short  period,  at  the 
same  time  doing  away  with  some  of  the  features 
that  were  objectionable  in  the  old  charter.  This 
bill  might  have  passed,  had  it  not  been  opposed 
by  the  extreme  Bank  men,  including  Clay  and 
Calhoun.  In  the  course  of  the  debate  over  it 
Benton  delivered  a  very  elaborate  and  carefully 
studied  speech  in  favor  of  hard  money  and  a 


WAR    ON  THE  BANK.  137 

currency  of  the  precious  metals  ;  a  speech  which 
is  to  this  day  well  worth  careful  reading.  Some 
of  his  financial  theories  were  crude  and  con 
fused  ;  but  on  the  main  question  he  was  per 
fectly  sound.  Both  he  and  Jackson  deserve 
great  credit  for  having  done  much  to  impress 
the  popular  mind  with  the  benefit  of  hard,  that 
is  to  say  honest,  money.  Benton  was  the  strong 
est  hard-money  man  then  in  public  life,  being, 
indeed,  popularly  nicknamed  "  Old  Bullion." 
He  thoroughly  appreciated  that  a  metallic  cur 
rency  was  of  more  vital  importance  to  the  la 
boring  men  and  to  men  of  small  capital  gen 
erally  than  to  any  of  the  richer  classes.  A 
metallic  currency  is  always  surer  and  safer  than 
a  paper  currency ;  where  it  exists  a  laboring 
man  dependent  on  his  wages  need  fear  less  than 
any  other  member  of  the  community  the  evils 
of  bad  banking.  Benton's  idea  of  the  danger 
to  the  masses  from  "the  money  power"  was 
exaggerated  ;  but  in  advocating  a  sound  gold 
currency  he  took  the  surest  way  to  overcome 
any  possible  dangerous  tendency.  A  craze  for 
"  soft,"  or  dishonest,  money  —  a  greenback 
movement,  or  one  for  short  weight  silver  dol 
lars —  works  more  to  the  disadvantage  of  the 
whole  mass  of  the  people  than  even  to  that  of 
the  capitalists ;  it  is  a  move  directly  in  the  in 
terests  of  "  the  money  power,"  which  its  loud- 


133  THOMAS  HART  BEN  TON. 

mouthed  advocates  are  ostensibly  opposing  in 
the  interests  of  democracy. 

Benton  continued  his  speeches.  The  panic 
was  now  subsiding;  there  had  not  been  time 
for  Jackson's  ruinous  policy  of  making  deposits 
in  numerous  state  banks,  and  thereby  encour 
aging  wild  inflation  of  credit,  to  bear  fruit  and, 
as  it  afterwards  did,  involve  the  whole  country 
in  financial  disaster.  Therefore  Benton  was 
able  to  exult  greatly  over  the  favorable  show 
ing  of  affairs  in  the  report  of  the  secretary  of 
the  treasury.  He  also  procured  the  passage  of 
a  gold  currency  law,  which,  however,  fixed  the 
ratio  of  value  between  gold  and  silver  at  sixteen 
to  one ;  an  improper  proportion,  but  one  which 
had  prevailed  for  three  centuries  in  the  Spanish- 
American  countries,  from  which  he  copied  it. 
In  consequence  of  this  law  gold,  long  banished, 
became  once  more  a  circulating  medium  of  ex 
change. 

The  Bank  of  the  United  States  afterwards 
was  turned  into  the  State  Bank  of  Pennsylvania  ; 
it  was  badly  managed  and  finally  became  in 
solvent.  The  Jacksonians  accepted  its  down 
fall  as  a  vindication  of  their  policy ;  but  in  re 
ality  it  was  due  to  causes  not  operative  at  the 
time  of  the  great  struggle  between  the  president 
and  the  Senate  over  its  continued  existence. 
Certainly  by  no  possible  financial  policy  could 


WAR  ON  THE  BANK.  139 

it  have  produced  such  widespread  ruin  and  dis 
tress  as  did  the  system  introduced  by  Jackson. 

Long  after  the  Bank  controversy  had  lost  all 
practical  bearing  it  continued  to  be  agitated  by 
the  chief  parties  to  it,  who  still  felt  sore  from 
the  various  encounters.  Jackson  assailed  it 
again  in  his  message ;  a  friendly  committee  of 
the  Senate  investigated  it  and  reported  in  its 
favor,  besides  going  out  of  their  way  to  rake  up 
charges  against  Jackson  and  Benton.  The  lat 
ter  replied  in  a  long  speech,  and  became  in 
volved  in  personalities  with  the  chairman,  Ty 
ler  of  Virginia.  Neither  side  paid  attention  to 
any  but  the  partisan  aspect  of  the  question,  and 
the  discussions  were  absolutely  profitless. 

The  whole  matter  was   threshed  over  again 

O 

and  again,  long  after  nothing  but  chaff  was  left, 
during  the  debates  on  Benton's  expunging  reso 
lution.  Few  now  would  defend  this  resolution. 
The  original  resolution  of  censure  may  have 
been  of  doubtful  propriety  ;  but  it  was  passed, 
was  entered  on  the  record,  and  had  become  a 
part  of  the  journal  of  the  Senate.  It  would 
have  been  perfectly  proper  to  pass  another  reso 
lution  condemning  or  reversing  the  original  one, 
and  approving  the  course  of  the  president ;  but 
it  was  in  the  highest  degree  improper  to  set 
about  what  was  in  form  falsifying  the  record. 
Still,  Benton  found  plenty  of  precedents  in  the 


140  THOMAS  HART  BENT  ON. 

annals  of  other  legislative  bodies  for  what  he 
proposed  to  do,  and  the  country,  as  a  whole, 
backed  him  up  heartily.  He  was  further  stim 
ulated  by  the  knowledge  that  there  was  prob 
ably  no  other  legislative  act  in  which  Jackson 
took  such  intense  interest,  or  which  could  so 
gratify  his  pride  ;  the  mortification  to  Clay  and 
Calhoun  would  be  equally  great.  Benton's  mo 
tion  failed  more  than  once,  but  the  complexion 
of  the  Senate  was  rapidly  changed  by  the  vari 
ous  states  substituting  Democratic  for  Whig  or 
anti-Jackson  senators.  Some  of  the  changes 
were  made,  as  in  Virginia,  by  senators  refusing 
to  vote  for  the  expunging  resolution,  as  required 
by  the  state  legislatures,  and  then  resigning 
their  seats,  pursuant  to  a  ridiculous  theory  of 
the  ultra  Democrats,  which,  if  carried  out,  would 
completely  nullify  the  provision  for  a  six  year's 
senatorial  term.  Finally,  at  the  very  close  of 
Jackson's  administration,  Benton  found  himself 
with  a  fair  majority  behind  him,  and  made  the 
final  move.  His  speech  was  of  course  mainly 
filled  with  a  highly  colored  account  of  the  bless 
ings  wrought  for  the  American  people  by  An 
drew  Jackson,  and  equally  of  course  the  latter 
was  compared  at  length  to  a  variety  of  ancient 
Roman  worthies.  The  final  scene  in  the  Senate 
had  an  element  of  the  comic  about  it.  The  ex- 
pungers  held  a  caucus  and  agreed  to  sit  the 


WAR  ON  THE  BANK.  141 

session  out  until  the  resolution  was  passed  ;  and 
with  prudent  forethought  Benton,  well  aware 
that  when  hungry  and  tired  his  followers  might 
show  less  inflexibility  of  purpose,  provided  in 
an  adjoining  committee-room  "an  ample  sup 
ply  of  cold  hams,  turkeys,  rounds  of  beef,  pickles, 
wines,  and  cups  of  hot  coffee,"  wherewith  to  in 
spirit  the  faint-hearted. 

Fortified  by  the  refreshments,  the  expungers 
won  a  complete  victory.  If  the  language  of 
Jackson's  admirers  was  overdrawn  and  strained 
to  the  last  degree  in  lauding  him  for  every  vir 
tue  that  he  had  or  had  not,  it  must  be  remem 
bered  that  his  opponents  went  quite  as  far 
wrong  on  the  other  side  in  their  denunciations 
and  extravagant  prophecies  of  gloom.  Webster 
made  a  very  dignified  and  forcible  speech  in 
closing  the  argument  against  the  resolution,  but 
Calhoun  and  Clay  were  much  less  moderate, — 
the  latter  drawing  a  vivid  picture  of  a  rapidly 
approaching  reign  of  lawless  military  violence, 
and  asserting  that  his  opponents  had  "  extin 
guished  one  of  the  brightest  and  purest  lights 
that  ever  burnt  at  the  altar  of  civil  liberty."  As 
a  proper  finale  Jackson,  to  show  his  apprecia 
tion,  gave  a  great  dinner  to  the  expungers  and 
their  wives,  Benton  sitting  at  the  head  of  the 
table.  Jackson  and  Benton  solemnly  thought 
that  they  were  taking  part  in  a  great  act  of  jus- 


142  THOMAS   HART  BENT  ON. 

tice,  and  were  amusingly  unable  to  see  the  comic 
side  of  their  acts.  They  probably  really  be 
lieved  most  of  their  own  denunciations  of  the 
Bank,  and  very  possibly  thought  that  the  wick 
edness  of  its  followers  might  tempt  them  to  do 
any  desperate  deed.  At  any  rate  they  enjoyed 
posing  alike  to  themselves  and  to  the  public  as 
persons  of  antique  virtue,  who  had  risked  both 
life  and  reputation  in  a  hazardous  but  success 
ful  attempt  to  save  the  liberties  of  the  people 
from  the  vast  and  hostile  forces  of  the  aristo 
cratic  "  money  power/' 

The  best  verdict  on  the  expunging  resolution 
was  given  by  Webster  when  he  characterized 
the  whole  affair  as  one  which,  if  it  were  not  re 
garded  as  a  ruthless  violation  of  a  sacred  instru 
ment,  would  appear  to  be  little  elevated  above 
the  character  of  a  contemptible  farce. 


CHAPTER  VII. 
THE  DISTRIBUTION   OF  THE   SURPLUS. 

BENTOX  was  supremely  self-satisfied  with  tlie 
part  he  had  played  in  the  struggle  with  the 
Bank.  But  very  few  thinking  men  would  now 
admit  that  his  actions,  as  a  whole,  on  the  occa 
sion  in  question,  were  to  his  credit,  although  in 
the  matter  of  the  branch  drafts  he  was  per 
fectly  right,  and  in  that  of  the  re-charter  at  least 
occupied  defensible  ground.  His  general  views 
on  monetary  matters,  however,  were  sound, 
and  on  some  of  the  financial  questions  that 
shortly  arose  he  occupied  a  rather  lonely  pre 
eminence  of  good  sense  among  his  fellow  sena 
tors  ;  such  being  particularly  the  case  as  regards 
the  various  mischievous  schemes  in  relation  to 
disposing  of  the  public  lands,  and  of  the  money 
drawn  from  their  sale.  The  revenue  derived 
from  all  sources,  including  these  sales  of  public 
lands,  had  for  some  years  been  much  in  excess 
of  the  governmental  expenses,  and  a  surplus 
had  accumulated  in  the  treasury.  This  surplus 
worked  more  damage  than  any  deficit  would 
have  done. 


144  THOMAS   HART  BE  NT  ON. 

There  were  gold  mines  in  the  Southern  States, 
which  had  been  growing  more  and  more  produc 
tive  ;  nnd,  as  the  cost  of  freighting  the  bul 
lion  was  excessive,  a  bill  was  introduced  to 
establish  branch  mints  at  New  Orleans  and  in 
the  gold  regions  of  Georgia  and  North  Carolina. 
Benton  advocated  this  strongly,  as  a  constitu 
tional  right  of  the  South  and  West,  and  as 
greatly  in  the  interest  of  those  two  sections; 
and  also  as  being  another  move  in  favor  of  a 
hard-money  currency  as  opposed  to  one  of  pa- 
.per.  There  was  strong  opposition  to  the  bill ; 
many  of  the  Whigs  having  been  carried  so  far 
by  their  heated  devotion  to  the  United  States 
Bank  in  its  quarrel  that  they  had  become  paper- 
money  men.  But  the  vote  was  neither  sectional 
nor  partisan  in  its  character.  Clay  led  the  op 
position,  while  Webster  supported  Benton. 

Before  this  time  propositions  to  distribute 
among  the  states  the  revenue  from  the  public 
lands  had  become  common  ;  and  they  were  suc 
ceeded  by  propositions  to  distribute  the  lands 
themselves,  and  then  by  others  to  distribute  all 
the  surplus  revenue.  Calhoun  finally  introduced 
an  amendment  to  the  Constitution  to  enable  the 
surplus  in  the  treasury  during  the  next  eight 
years  to  be  distributed  among  the  various  states; 
the  estimate  being  that  for  the  time  mentioned 
there  would  be  about  nine  millions  surplus  an- 


THE  DISTRIBUTION  OF   THE  SURPLUS.    145 

Dually.  Benton  attacked  the  proposal  very 
ably,  showing  the  viciousness  of  a  scheme  which 
would  degrade  every  state  government  into  the 
position  of  a  mendicant,  and  would  allow  money 
to  be  collected  from  the  citizens  with  one  hand 
in  order  to  be  given  back  to  them  with  the 
other;  and  also  denying  that  the  surplus  would 
reach  anything  like  the  dimensions  indicated. 
He  ridiculed  the  idea  of  making  a  constitutional 
amendment  to  cover  so  short  a  period  of  time  ; 
and  stated  that  he  would  greatly  prefer  to  see 
the  price  paid  for  public  lands  by  incoming 
settlers  reduced,  and  what  surplus  there  was 
expended  on  strengthening  the  defenses  of  the 
United  States  against  foreign  powers.  This 
last  proposition  was  eminently  proper.  We 
were  then,  as  always,  in  our  chronic  state  of 
utter  defenselessness  against  any  hostile  attack, 
and  yet  were  in  imminent  danger  of  getting  em 
broiled  with  at  least  one  great  power  —  France. 
Our  danger  is  always  that  we  shall  spend  too 
little,  and  not  too  much,  in  keeping  ourselves 
prepared  for  foreign  war.  Calhoun's  resolution 
was  a  total  failure,  and  was  never  even  brought 
to  a  vote. 

Benton's  proposed  method  of  using  the  sur 
plus  came  in  with  peculiar  propriety  on  account 
of  the  conduct  of  the  Whigs  and  Nullifiers  in 
joining  to  oppose  the  appropriation  of  three  mil- 
10 


146  THOMAS  HART   BENT  ON. 

lions  of  dollars  for  purposes  of  defense,  which 
was  provided  for  in  the  general  fortification 
bill.  The  House  passed  this  bill  by  a  great  ma 
jority.  It  was  eminently  proper  that  we  should 
at  once  take  steps  to  provide  for  the  very  pos 
sible  contingency  of  a  war  with  France,  as  the 
relations  with  that  power  were  growing  more 
threatening  every  day  ;  but  the  opposition  of 
the  anti-Jackson  men  to  the  administration  and 
to  all  its  measures  had  become  so  embittered 
that  they  were  willing  to  run  the  risk  of  seri 
ously  damaging  the  national  credit  and  honor, 
if  they  could  thereby  score  a  point  against  their 
political  adversaries.  Accordingly,  under  the 
lead  of  Webster,  Clay,  and  Calhoun,  they  de 
feated  the  bill  in  the  Senate,  in  spite  of  all  that 
could  be  done  to  save  it  by  Ben  ton,  who,  what 
ever  his  faults,  was  always  patriotic.  The  ap 
propriation  had  been  very  irregular  in  form, 
and  under  ordinary  circumstances  there  would 
have  been  good  justification  for  inquiring  into 
it  before  permitting  its  passage  ;  but  under  the 
circumstances  its  defeat  at  the  moment  was 
most  unfortunate.  For  the  president  had  been 
pressing  France,  even  to  the  point  of  tolerably 
plain  threats,  in  order  to  induce  or  compel  her 
to  fulfill  the  conditions  of  the  recent  treaty  by 
which  she  had  bound  herself  to  pay  a  consider 
able  indemnity,  long  owing  by  her  to  the  United 


THE  DISTRIBUTION  OF   THE   SURPLUS.    147 

States  for  depredations  on  our  commerce.  Now 
she  menaced  war,  avowedly  on  the  ground  that 
we  were  unprepared  to  resist  her  ;  and  this  vote 
in  the  Senate  naturally  led  the  French  govern 
ment  to  suppose  that  Jackson  was  not  sustained 
by  the  country  in  the  vigorous  position  which 
he  had  assumed.  In  speaking  on  the  message 
of  the  president  which  alluded  to  this  state  of 
affairs,  Benton  strongly  advocated  our  standing 
firmly  for  our  rights,  making  a  good  speech, 
which  showed  much  historical  learning.  He 
severely  reproached  the  anti-administration  sen 
ators  for  their  previous  conduct  in  causing  the 
loss  of  the  defense  appropriation  bill,  and  for 
preferring  to  do  worse  than  waste  the  surplus 
by  distributing  it  among  the  different  states  in 
stead  of  applying  it  according  to  the  provisions 
of  that  wise  measure. 

This  brought  on  a  bitter  wrangle,  in-  which 
Benton  certainly  had  the  best  of  it.  Calhoun 
was  in  favor  of  humiliating  non-resistance  ;  he 
never  advocated  warlike  measures  when  the 
dignity  of  the  nation  was  at  stake,  fond  though 
he  was  of  threatening  violence  on  behalf  of 
slavery  or  that  form  of  secession  known  as 
nullification.  Benton  quoted  from  speeches  in 
the  French  Chamber  of  Deputies  to  show  that 
the  French  were  encouraged  to  take  the  posi 
tion  that  they  did  on  account  of  the  action  of 


148  THOMAS  HART  BEN  TON. 

the  Senate,  and  the  disposition  shown  by  a 
majority  among  the  senators  rather  to  pull 
down  the  president  in  a  party  struggle  than 
to  uphold  him  in  his  efforts  to  save  the  na 
tional  honor  in  a  contest  with  France.  A  cu 
rious  feature  of  his  speech  was  that  in  which 
he  warned  the  latter  power  that,  in  the  event 
of  a  conflict,  it  would  have  to  do  with  a  branch 
of  the  same  race  which,  "  from  the  days  of 
Agincourt  and  Crecy,  of  Blenheim  and  Ramil- 
lies,  down  to  the  days  of  Salamanca  and  Wa 
terloo,  has  always  known  perfectly  well  how 
to  deal  with  the  impetuous  and  fiery  courage 
of  the  French."  This  sudden  out-cropping  of 
what,  in  Bentonian  English,  might  be  called 
Pan-Anglo-Saxon  sentiment  was  all  the  more 
surprising  inasmuch  as  both  Benton  himself 
and  the  party  to  which  he  belonged  were 
strongly  anti-English  in  their  way  of  looking 
at  our  foreign  policy,  at  least  so  far  as  North 
America  was  concerned.  In  the  end  France 
yielded,  though  trying  to  maintain  her  dignity 
by  stating  that  she  had  not  done  so,  and  the 
United  States  received  what  wras  due  them. 

Benton  strongly  opposed  the  payment  by  the 
United  States  of  the  private  claims  of  its  citi 
zens  for  damages  arising  from  the  French  spo 
liations  at  the  end  of  the  last  century.  lie 
pointed  out  that  the  effort  to  pay  such  claims, 


THE  DISTRIBUTION    OF  THE  SURPLUS.    149 

scores  of  years  after  the  time  of  their  accru 
ing,  rarely  benefits  any  of  the  parties  origi 
nally  in  interest,  and  can  only  do  real  service 
to  dishonest  speculators.  His  speech  on  this 
matter  would  not  be  bad  reading  for  some  of 
the  pension-jobbing  congressmen  of  the  present 
day,  and  their  supporters ;  but  as  concerned 
these  French  claims  he  could  have  been  easily 
answered. 

In  the  controversy  over  the  bill  introducd 
by  Clay,  to  distribute  the  revenue  derived  from 
the  public  lands  among  the  states  for  the  next 
five  years,  Benton  showed  to  great  advantage 
compared  both  to  the  introducer  of  the  bill  him 
self,  and  to  Webster,  his  supporter.  He  had 
all  along  taken  the  view  of  the  land  question 
that  would  be  natural  to  a  far-seeing  Western 
statesman  desirous  of  encouraging  immigration. 
He  wished  the  public  lands  to  be  sold  in  small 
parcels  to  actual  settlers,  at  prices  that  would 
allow  any  poor  man  who  was  thrifty  to  take  up 
a  claim.  He  had  already  introduced  a  bill  to 
sell  them  at  graduated  prices,  the  minimum 
being  established  at  a  dollar  and  twenty-five 
cents  an  acre ;  but  if  land  remained  unsold  at 
this  rate  for  three  years  it  was  then  to  be  sold 
for  what  it  would  bring  in  the  market.  This 
bill  passed  the  Senate,  but  failed  in  the  House. 

In   opposing  Clay's  distribution  scheme  Ben- 


150         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

ton  again  brought  forward  his  plan  of  using  the 
surplus  to  provide  for  the  national  defenses  ; 
and  in  his  speech  showed  the  strongly  national 
turn  of  his  mind,  saying  :  — 

In  this  great  system  of  national  defense  the  whole 
Union  is  equally  interested  ;  for  the  country,  in  all 
that  concerns  its  defenses,  is  but  a  unit,  and  every 
section  is  interested  in  the  defense  of  every  other  sec 
tion,  and  every  individual  citizen  is  interested  in  the 
defense  of  the  whole  population.  It  is  in  vain  to  say 
that  the  navy  is  on  the  sea,  and  the  fortifications  on 
the  sea-hoard,  and*  that  the  citizens  in  the  interior 
states,  or  in  the  valley  of  the  Mississippi,  have  no 
interest  in  these  remote  defenses.  Such  an  idea  is 
mistaken  and  delusive  ;  the  inhabitant  of  Missouri  or 
of  Indiana  has  a  direct  interest  in  keeping  open  the 
mouths  of  the  rivers,  defending  the  sea-port  towns, 
and  preserving  a  naval  force  that  will  protect  the  pro 
duce  of  his  labor  in  crossing  the  ocean  and  arriving 
safely  in  foreign  markets. 

Benton's  patriotism  always  included  the 
whole  country  in  spite  of  the  strength  of  his 
local  sympathies. 

The  bill  passed  the  Senate  by  a  rather  close 
vote,  and  went  to  the  House,  where  it  soon  bo- 
come  evident  that  it  was  doomed  to  failure. 
There  was  another  bill,  practically  of  much  the 
same  import,  before  the  Senate,  providing  for 
the  distribution  of  the  surplus  among  the  states 


THE  DISTRIBUTION  OF  THE  SURPLUS.    151 

in  proportion  to  their  electoral  votes,  but  omit 
ting  the  excellent  proviso  concerning  the  de 
fenses.  To  suit  the  views  of  Calhoun  and  the 
sticklers  for  strict  construction  generally,  the 
form  of  this  rival  bill  was  changed,  so  that 
the  "distribution"  purported  to  be  a  "deposit" 
merely ;  the  money  being  nominally  only  loaned 
to  the  states,  who  pledged  their  faith  to  return 
it  when  Congress  should  call  for  it.  As  it  was 
of  course  evident  that  such  a  loan  would  never 
be  repaid,  the  substitution  of  "  deposit "  for 
"distribution"  can  only  be  regarded  as  a  ver 
bal  change  to  give  the  doctrinaires  a  loop-hole 
for  escape  from  their  previous  position  ;  they 
all  took  advantage  of  it,  and  the  bill  received 
overwhelming  support,  and  was  passed  by  both 
houses. 

Benton,  however,  stood  out  against  it  to  the 
last,  and  in  a  very  powerful  speech  foretold  the 
evils  which  the  plan  would  surely  work.  He 
scornfully  exposed  the  way  in  which  some  of 
the  members  were  trying,  by  a  trick  of  word 
ing,  to  hide  the  nature  of  the  bill  they  were 
enacting  into  a  law,  and  thus  to  seem  to  justify 
themselves  for  the  support  they  were  giving  it. 
ik  It  is  in  name  a  deposit ;  in  form,  a  loan  ;  in 
essence  and  design,  a  distribution,''  said  Benton. 
Fie  ridiculed  the  attitude  of  the  hair-splitting 
strict  constructionists,  like  Calhoun,  who  had 


152        THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

always  pretended  most  scrupulously  to  respect 
the  exact  wording  of  the  Constitution,  and  who 
had  previously  refused  to  vote  for  distribution 
on  the  ground  that  it  was  unconstitutional:  — 

At  the  commencement  of  the  present  session  a 
proposition  was  made  [by  Calhoun]  to  amend  the 
Constitution,  to  permit  this  identical  distribution  to  be 
made.  That  proposition  is  now  upon  our  calendar, 
for  the  action  of  Congress.  All  at  once  it  is  discov 
ered  that  a  change  of  name  will  do  as  well  as  a 
change  of  the  Constitution.  Strike  out  the  word 
"  distribute  "  and  insert  the  word  "  deposit,"  and  in 
continently  the  impediment  is  removed;  the  consti 
tutional  difficulty  is  surmounted,  and  the  distribution 
can  be  made. 

He  showed  that  to  the  states  themselves  the 
moneys  distributed  would  either  be  useless,  or 
else  —  and  much  more  probably — they  would  be 
fruitful  sources  of  corruption  and  political  de 
bauchery.  He  was  quite  right.  It  would  have 
been  very  much  better  to  have  destroyed  the 
surplus  than  to  have  distributed  it  as  was  act 
ually  done.  None  of  the  states  gained  any  real 
benefit  by  the  transaction  ;  most  were  seriously 
harmed.  At  the  best,  the  money  was  squan 
dered  in  the  rage  for  public  improvements  that 
then  possessed  the  whole  people  ;  often  it  was 
stolen  outright,  or  never  accounted  for.  In 
the  one  case,  it  was  an  incentive  to  extrava- 


THE  DISTRIBUTION  OF  THE  SURPLUS.    153 


gance  ;  in  the  other,  it  was  a  corruption  fund. 
Yet  the  popular  feeling  was  strongly  in  favor 
of  the  measure  at  the  time,  and  Benton  was 
almost  the  only  public  man  of  note  who  dared 
to  resist  it.  On  this  occasion,  as  in  the  clos 
ing  act  of  the  struggle  with  the  Nullifiers,  he 
showed  more  backbone  than  did  his  great 
chief ;  for  Jackson  signed  the  bill,  although 
criticising  it  most  forcibly  and  pungently. 

The  success  of  this  measure  naturally  encour 
aged  the  presentation  of  others.  Clay  attempted 
to  revive  his  land-money  distribution  bill,  but 
was  defeated,  mainly  through  Benton's  efforts. 
Three  or  four  other  similar  schemes,  including 
one  of  Calboun's,  also  failed.  Finally  a  clause 
providing  for  a  further  "  deposit "  of  surplus 
moneys  with  the  states  was  tacked  to  a  bill  ap 
propriating  money  for  defenses,  thereby  loading 
it  down  so  that  it  was  eventually  lost.  In  the 
Senate  the  "  deposit  "  amendment  was  finally 
struck  out,  in  spite  of  the  opposition  of  Clay, 
Calhoun,  and  Webster.  Throughout  the  whole 
discussion  of  the  distribution  of  the  surplus 
Benton  certainly  shines  by  comparison  with 
any  one  of  his  three  great  senatorial  rivals. 

He  shows  to  equally  great  advantage  com 
pared  to  them  in  the  part  taken  by  him  in  ref 
erence  to  Jackson's  so-called  specie  circulars. 
The  craze  for  speculation  had  affected  the  sales 


154         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

of  public  lands,  which  were  increasing  at  an 
extraordinary  rate,  nearly  twenty-five  million 
dollars'  worth  being  sold  in  1836.  As  a  rule, 
the  payments  were  made  in  the  notes  of  irre 
sponsible  banks,  gotten  up  in  many  cases  by  the 
land  speculators  themselves.  The  sales  were 
running  up  to  five  millions  a  month,  with  pros 
pect  of  a  boundless  increase,  so  that  all  the  public 
land  bade  fair  to  be  converted  into  inconverti 
ble  paper.  Benton  had  foreseen  the  evil  results 
attending  such  a  change,  and,  though  well 
aware  that  he  was  opposing  powerful  interests 
in  his  own  section  of  the  country,  had  already 
tried  to  put  a  stop  to  it  by  law.  In  his  speech 
he  had  stated  that  the  unprecedented  increase 
in  the  sale  of  public  lands  was  due  to  the 
accommodations  received  by  speculators  from 
worthless  banks,  whose  notes  in  small  denomi 
nations  would  be  taken  to  some  distant  part  of 
the  country,  whence  it  would  be  a  long  time 
before  they  were  returned  and  presented  for 
payment.  The  speculators,  with  paper  of  which 
the  real  value  was  much  below  par,  could  out 
bid  settlers  and  cultivators  who  could  only 
offer  specie,  or  notes  that  were  its  equivalent. 
He  went  on  to  say  that  "  the  effect  was  equally 
injurious  to  every  interest  concerned — except 
the  banks  and  the  speculators  :  it  was  injurious 
to  the  treasury,  which  was  filling  up  with  paper ; 


THE  DISTRIBUTION   OF  THE  SURPLUS.    155 

to  the  new  states,  which  were  flooded  with 
paper  ;  and  to  settlers  and  cultivators,  who  were 
outbid  by  speculators  loaded  with  this  bor 
rowed  paper.  A  return  to  specie  payments  for 
lands  was  the  remedy  for  all  these  evils." 

Benton's  reasoning  was  perfectly  sound.  The 
effects  on  settlers,  on  the  new  states,  and  on 
the  government  itself  were  precisely  such  as  he 
described,  and  the  proposed  remedy  was  the 
right  one.  But  his  bill  failed  ;  for  the  Whigs, 
including  even  Webster,  had  by  this  time 
worked  themselves  up  until  they  were  fairly 
crazy  at  the  mere  mention  of  paper -money 
banks. 

Jackson,  however,  not  daunted  by  the  fate  of 
the  bill,  got  Benton  to  draw  up  a  treasury  order, 
and  had  it  issued.  This  served  the  same  pur 
pose,  as  it  forbade  the  land-offices  to  receive 
anything  but  gold  and  silver  in  payment  for 
land.  It  was  not  issued  until  Congress  had  ad 
journed,  for  fear  that  body  might  counteract  it 
by  a  law  ;  and  this  was  precisely  what  was 
attempted  at  the  next  session,  when  a  joint 
resolution  was  passed  rescinding  the  order,  and 
practically  endeavoring  to  impose  the  worthless 
paper  currency  of  the  states  upon  the  federal 
government.  Benton  stood  almost  alone  in  the 
fight  he  made  against  this  resolution,  although 
the  right  of  the  matter  was  so  plainly  on  his 


156         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

side.  Ill  his  speech  he  foretold  clearly  the 
coming  of  the  great  financial  crisis  that  was 
then  near  at  hand.  The  resolution,  however, 
amounted  to  nothing,  as  it  turned  out,  for  it 
was  passed  so  late  in  the  session  that  the  presi 
dent,  by  simply  withholding  his  signature  from 
it,  was  enabled  to  prevent  it  from  having  effect. 


CHAPTER   VIII. 
THE    SLAVE  QUESTION  APPEARS   IN   POLITICS. 

TOWARDS  the  close  of  Jackson's  administra 
tion,  slavery  for  the  first  time  made  its  perma 
nent  appearance  in  national  politics  ;  although 
for  some  years  yet  it  had  little  or  no  influence 
in  shaping  the  course  of  political  movements. 
In  1833  the  abolition  societies  of  the  North 
came  into  prominence  ;  they  had  been  started  a 
couple  of  years  previously. 

Black  slavery  was  such  a  grossly  anachronistic 
and  un-American  form  of  evil,  that  it  is  difficult 
to  discuss  calmly  the  efforts  to  abolish  it,  and 
to  remember  that  many  of  these  efforts  were 
calculated  to  do,  and  actually  did,  more  harm 
than  good.  We  are  also  very  apt  to  forget  that 
it  was  perfectly  possible  and  reasonable  for  en 
lightened  and  virtuous  men,  who  fully  recog 
nized  it  as  an  evil,  yet  to  prefer  its  continuance 
to  having  it  interfered  with  in  a  way  that  would 
produce  even  worse  results.  Black  slavery  in 
Hayti  was  characterized  by  worse  abuse  than 
ever  was  the  case  in  the  United  States ;  yet, 


158  THOMAS  HART  BEN  TON. 

looking  at  the  condition  of  that  republic  now, 
it  may  well  be  questioned  whether  it  would  not 
have  been  greatly  to  her  benefit  in  the  end  to 
have  had  slavery  continue  a  century  or  so 
longer,  —  its  ultimate  extinction  being  certain, 
—  rather  than  to  have  had  her  attain  freedom 
as  she  actually  did,  with  the  results  that  have 
flowed  from  her  action.  When  an  evil  of  colos 
sal  size  exists,  it  is  often  the  case  that  there  is 
no  possible  way  of  dealing  with  it  that  will  not 
itself  be  fraught  with  baleful  results.  Nor  can 
the  ultra -philanthropic  method  be  always,  or 
even  often,  accepted  as  the  best.  If  there  is  one 
question  upon  which  the  philanthropists  of 
the  present  day,  especially  the  more  emotional 
ones,  are  agreed,  it  is  that  any  law  restricting 
Chinese  immigration  is  an  outrage  ;  yet  it  seems 
incredible  that  any  man  of  even  moderate  intel 
ligence  should  not  see  that  no  greater  calamity 
could  now  befall  the  United  States  than  to  have 
the  Pacific  slope  fill  up  with  a  Mongolian  popu 
lation. 

The  cause  of  the  Abolitionists  has  had  such  a 
halo  shed  round  it  by  the  after  course  of  events, 
which  they  themselves  in  reality  did  very  little 
to  shape,  that  it  has  been  usual  to  speak  of 
them  with  absurdly  exaggerated  praise.  Their 
courage,  and  for  the  most  part  their  sincerity, 
cannot  be  too  highly  spoken  of,  but  their  share 


SLAVE    QUESTION  APPEARS   IN  POLITICS.    159 

in  abolishing  slavery  was  far  less  than  has  com 
monly  been  represented ;  any  single  non-aboli 
tionist  politician,  like  Lincoln  or  Seward,  did 
more  than  all  the  professional  Abolitionists  com 
bined  really  to  bring  about  its  destruction.  The 
abolition  societies  were  only  in  a  very  restricted 
degree  the  causes  of  the  growing  feeling  in  the 
North  against  slavery  ;  they  are  rather  to  be  re 
garded  as  themselves  manifestations  or  accom 
paniments  of  that  feeling.  The  anti-slavery  out 
burst  in  the  Northern  States  over  the  admission 
of  Missouri  took  place  a  dozen  years  before 
there  was  an  abolition  society  in  existence ;  and 
the  influence  of  the  professional  abolitionists 
upon  the  growth  of  the  anti-slavery  sentiment 
as  often  as  not  merely  warped  it  and  twisted  it 
out  of  proper  shape,  —  as  when  at  one  time  they 
showed  a  strong  inclination  to  adopt  disunion 
views,  although  it  was,  self-evident  that  by  no 
possibility  could  slavery  be  abolished  unless  the 
Union  was  preserved.  Their  tendency  towards 
impracticable  methods  was  well  shown  in  the 
position  they  assumed  towards  him  wrho  was 
not  only  the  greatest  American,  but  also  the 
greatest  man,  of  the  nineteenth  century ;  for  dur 
ing  all  the  terrible  four  years'  that  sad,  strong, 
patient  Lincoln  worked  and  suffered  for  the 
people,  he  had  to  dread  the  influence  of  the  ex 
treme  Abolitionists  only  less  than  that  of  the 


160         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

Copperheads.  Many  of  their  leaders  possessed 
no  good  qualities  beyond  their  fearlessness  and 
truth  —  qualities  that  were  also  possessed  by 
the  Southern  fire-eaters.  They  belonged  to 
that  class  of  men  that  is  always  engaged  in 
some  agitation  or  other;  only  it  happened  that 
in  this  particular  agitation  they  were  right. 
Wendell  Phillips  may  be  taken  as  a  very  good 
type  of  the  whole.  His  services  against  slavery 
prior  to  the  war  should  always  be  remembered 
with  gratitude ;  but  after  the  war,  and  until 
the  day  of  his  death,  his  position  on  almost 
every  public  question  was  either  mischievous  or 
ridiculous,  and  usually  both. 

When  the  abolitionist  movement  started  it 
was  avowedly  designed  to  be  cosmopolitan  in 
character;  the  originators  looked  down  upon 
any  merely  national  or  patriotic  feeling.  This 
again  deservedly  took  away  from  their  influ 
ence.  In  fact,  it  would  have  been  most  un 
fortunate  had  the  majority  of  the  Northerners 
been  from  the  beginning  in  hearty  accord  with 
the  Abolitionists  ;  at  the  best  it  would  have  re 
sulted  at  that  time  in  the  disruption  of  the 
Union  and  the  perpetuation  of  slavery  in  the 
South. 

But  after  all  is  said,  the  fact  remains,  that  on 
the  main  issue  the  Abolitionists  were  at  least 
working  in  the  right  direction.  Sooner  or  later, 


SLAVE   QUESTION  APPEARS  IN  POLITICS.    161 

by  one  means  or  another,  slavery  had  to  go. 
It  is  beyond  doubt  a  misfortune  that  in  cer 
tain  districts  the  bulk  of  the  population  should 
be  composed  of  densely  ignorant  negroes,  often 
criminal  or  vicious  in  their  instincts  ;  but  such 
is  the  case,  and  the  best,  and  indeed  the  only 
proper  course  to  pursue,  is  to  treat  them  with 
precisely  the  same  justice  that  is  meted  out  tq 
whites.  The  effort  to  do  so  in  time  immedi 
ately  past  has  not  resulted  so  successfully  as 
was  hoped  and  expected ;  but  nevertheless  no 
other  way  would  have  worked  as  well. 

Slavery  was  chiefly  responsible  for  the  streak 
of  coarse  and  brutal  barbarism  which  ran 
through  the  Southern  character,  and  which 
marked  the  ferocious  outcry  instantly  raised 
by  the  whole  Southern  press  against  the  Abo 
litionists.  There  had  been  an  abortive  negro 
rising  in  Virginia  almost  at  the  same  time  that 
the  abolitionist  movement  first  came  into  prom 
inence  ;  and  this  fact  added  to  the  rage  and  ter 
ror  with  which  the  South  regarded  the  latter. 
The  clamor  against  the  North  was  deafening ; 
and  though  it  soon  subsided  for  the  time  being, 
it  never  afterwards  entirely  died  away.  As 
has  been  shown  already,  there  had  always  been 
a  strong  separatist  feeling  in  the  South  ;  but 
hitherto  its  manifestations  had  been  local  and 

sporadic,  never  affecting  all  the  states  at  the 
11 


102  THOMAS  HART  BENT  ON. 

same  time ;  for  it  had  never  happened  that  the 
cause  which  called  forth  any  particular  mani 
festation  was  one  bearing  on  the  whole  South 
alike.  The  alien  and  sedition  laws  were  more 
fiercely  resented  in  Virginia  and  Kentucky  than 
in  South  Carolina  ;  the  tariff,  which  so  angered 
the  latter,  pleased  Louisiana  ;  and  Georgia  and 
Alabama  alone  were  affected  by  the  presence 
of  great  Indian  communities  within  their  bor 
ders.  But  slavery  was  an  interest  common  to 
the  whole  South.  When  it  was  felt  to  be  in  any 
way  menaced,  all  Southerners  came  together 
for  its  protection  ;  and,  from  the  time  of  the 
rise  of  the  Abolitionists  onward,  the  separatist 
movement  throughout  the  South  began  to  iden 
tify  itself  with  the  maintenance  of  slavery, 
and  gradually  to  develop  greater  and  greater 
strength.  Its  growth  was  furthered  and  has 
tened  by  the  actions  of  the  more  ambitious  and 
unscrupulous  of  the  Southern  politicians,  who 
saw  that  it  offered  a  chance  for  them  to  push 
themselves  forward,  and  who  were  perfectly 
willing  to  wreak  almost  irreparable  harm  to 
the  nation  if  by  so  doing  they  could  advance 
their  own  selfish  interests.  It  was  in  reference 
to  these  politicians  that  Benton  quoted  with 
approval  a  letter  from  ex-President  Madison, 
which  ran  :  — 


SLAVE    QUESTION  APPEARS   IX  POL  I  TICS.     163 

The  danger  is  not  to  be  concealed,  that  the  sym 
pathy  arising  from  known  causes,  and  the  inculcated 
impression  of  a  permanent  incompatibility  of  inter 
ests  between  the  South  and  the  North  may  put  it  in 
the  power  of  popular  leaders,  aspiring  to  the  highest 
stations,  to  unite  the  South,  on  some  critical  occasion, 
in  a  course  that  will  end  by  creating  a  new  theatre 
of  great,  though  inferior,  interest.  In  pursuing  this 
course  the  first  and  most  obvious  step  is  nullification, 
the  next  secession,  and  the  last  a  farewell  separation. 

This  was  a  pretty  good  forecast  of  the  crisis 
that  was  precfpitated  by  the  greedy  and  reck 
less  ambition  of  the  secessionist  leaders  in  1860. 
The  moral  difference  between  Benedict  Arnold 
on  the  one  hand,  and  Aaron  Burr  or  Jefferson 
Davis  on  the  other,  is  precisely  the  difference 
that  obtains  between  a  politician  who  sells  his 
vote  for  money  and  one  who  supports  a  bad 
measure  in  consideration  of  being  given  some 
high  political  position. 

The  Abolitionists  immediately  contrived  to 
bring  themselves  before  the  notice  of  Congress 
in  two  ways  ;  by  the  presentation  of  petitions 
for  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  District  of 
Columbia,  and  by  sending  out  to  the  Southern 
States  a  shoal  of  abolition  pamphlets,  news 
papers,  and  rather  ridiculous  illustrated  cuts. 
What  the  precise  point  of  the  last  proceeding 
was  no  one  can  tell ;  the  circulation  of  such 


164        THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

writings  as  theirs  in  the  South  could  not  pos 
sibly  serve  any  good  purpose.  But  they  had  a 
right  to  send  what  they  wished,  and  the  conduct 
of  many  of  the  Southerners  in  trying  to  get  a 
federal  law  passed  to  prohibit  their  writings 
from  being  carried  in  the  mail  was  as  wrong  as 
it  was  foolish  ;  while  the  brutal  clamor  raised 
in  the  South  against  the  whole  North  as  well 
as  against  the  Abolitionists,  and  the  conduct 
of  certain  Southern  legislatures  in  practically 
setting  prices  on  the  heads  of  the  leaders  in 
the  objectionable  movement,  in  turn  angered 
the  North  and  gave  the  Abolitionists  tenfold 
greater  strength  than  they  would  otherwise 
have  had. 

The  question  first  arose  upon  the  presentation 
of  a  perfectly  proper  and  respectful  petition 
sent  to  the  Senate  by  a  society  of  Pennsylvania 
Quakers,  and  praying  for  the  abolition  of  slavery 
in  the  District  of  Columbia.  The  District  was 
solely  under  the  control  of  Congress,  and  was 
the  property  of  the  nation  at  large,  so  that  Con 
gress  was  the  proper  and  the  only  body  to  which 
any  petition  concerning  the  affairs  of  the  Dis 
trict  could  be  sent ;  and  if  the  right  of  petition 
meant  anything,  it  certainly  meant  that  the 
people,  or  any  portion  thereof,  should  have  the 
right  to  petition  their  representatives  in  regard 
to  their  own  affairs.  Yet  certain  Southern  ex- 


SLAVE   QUESTION  APPEARS  IN  POLITICS.    165 

tremists,  under  the  lead  of  Calhoun,  were  anx 
ious  to  refuse  to  receive  the  paper.  Benton 
voted  in  favor  of  receiving  it,  and  was  followed 
in  his  action  by  a  number  of  other  Southern 
senators.  He  spoke  at  length  on  the  subject, 
and  quite  moderately,  even  crediting  the  peti 
tioners,  or  many  of  them,  with  being  "  good  peo 
ple,  aiming  at  benevolent  objects,  and  endeav 
oring  to  ameliorate  the  condition  of  one  part  of 
the  human  race,  without  inflicting  calamities  on 
another  part,"  which  was  going  very  far  indeed 
for  a  slave-holding  senator  of  that  time.  He 
was  of  course  totally  opposed  to  abolition  and 
the  Abolitionists,  and  showed  that  the  only  im 
mediate  effect  of  the  movement  had  been  to 
make  the  lot  of  the  slaves  still  worse,  and  for  the 
moment  to  do  away  with  any  chance  of  intelli 
gently  discussing  the  question  of  emancipation. 
For,  like  many  other  Southerners,  he  fondly 
cherished  the  idea  of  gradual  peaceful  emanci 
pation, —  an  idea  which  the  course  of  events 
made  wholly  visionary,  but  which,  under  the 
circumstances,  might  well  have  been  realized. 
He  proceeded  to  give  most  questionable  praise 
to  the  North  for  some  acts  as  outrageous  and 
disgraceful  as  were  ever  perpetrated  by  its  citi 
zens,  stating  that  — 

Their   conduct  was    above    all    praise,    above   all 
thanks,  above  all  gratitude.     They  had  chased  off  the 


166  THOMAS   HART  BENT  ON. 

foreign  emissaries,  silenced  the  gabbling  tongues  of 
female  dupes,  and  dispersed  the  assemblages,  whether 
fanatical,  visionary,  or  incendiary,  of  all  that  congre 
gated  to  preach  against  evils  that  affected  others,  not 
themselves  ;  and  to  propose  remedies  to  aggravate  the 
disease  which  they  had  pretended  to  cure.  They 
had  acted  with  a  noble  spirit.  They  had  exerted  a 
vigor  beyond  all  law.  They  had  obeyed  the  enact 
ments,  not  of  the  statute-book,  but  of  the  heart. 

These  fervent  encomiums  were  fully  warranted 
by  the  acts  of  various  Northern  mobs,  that  had 
maltreated  abolitionist  speakers,  broken  up 
anti-slavery  meetings,  and  committed  numerous 
other  deeds  of  lawless  violence.  But  however 
flattered  the  Northerners  of  that  generation 
may  have  been,  in  feeling  that  they  thoroughly 
deserved  Benton's  eulogy,  it  is  doubtful  if  their 
descendants  will  take  quite  the  same  pride  in 
looking  back  to  it.  An  amusing  incident  of  the 
debate  was  Calhoun's  attack  upon  one  of  the 
most  subservient  allies  the  South  ever  had  in 
the  Northern  States ;  be  caused  to  be  sent  up 
to  the  desk  and  read  an  abolition  paper  pub 
lished  in  New  Hampshire,  which  contained  a 
bitter  assault  upon  Franklin  Pierce,  then  a 
member  of  Congress.  Nominally  he  took  tins 
course  to  show  that  there  was  much  greater 
strength  in  the  abolition  movement,  and  there 
fore  much  greater  danger  to  the  South,  than  the 


SLAVE  QUESTION  APPEARS   IN  POLITICS.     167 

Northern  senators  were  willing  to  admit ;  in  real 
ity  he  seems  to  have  acted  partly  from  wanton 
malice,  partly  from  overbearing  contempt  for 
the  truckling  allies  and  apologists  of  slavery  in 
the  North,  and  partly  from  a  desire  not  to  see 
the  discussion  die  out,  but  rather,  in  spite  of  his 
continual  profession  to  the  contrary,  to  see  it 
maintained  as  a  standing  subject  of  irritation. 
He  wished  to  refuse  to  receive  the  petitions,  on 
the  ground  that  they  touched  a  subject  that 
ought  not  even  to  be  discussed  ;  yet  he  must 
have  known  well  that  he  was  acting  in  the  very 
way  most  fitted  to  give  rise  to  discussion, —  a 
fact  that  was  pointed  out  to  him  by  Benton,  in 
a  caustic  speech.  He  also  took  the  ground  that 
the  question  of  emancipation  affected  the  states 
exclusively,  and  that  Congress  had  no  more  ju 
risdiction  over  the  subject  in  the  District  of 
Columbia  than  she  had  in  the  State  of  North 
Carolina.  This  precious  contribution  to  the 
true  interpretation  of  the  Constitution  was  so 
farcically  and  palpabty  false  that  it  is  incredi 
ble  that  he  should  himself  have  believed  what 
he  was  saying.  He  was  still  smarting  from  the 
nullification  controversy ;  he  had  seceded  from 
his  party,  and  was  sore  with  disappointed  am 
bition  ;  and  it  seems  very  improbable  that  he 
was  honest  in  his  professions  of  regret  at  see 
ing  questions  come  up  which  would  disturb 


168        THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

the  Union.  On  the  contrary,  much  of  the  op 
position  he  was  continually  making  to  supposi 
titious  federal  and  Northern  encroachments  on 
the  rights  of  the  South  must  have  been  merely 
factious,  and  it  seems  likely  that,  partly  from  a 
feeling  of  revenge  and  partly  with  the  hope  of 
gratifying  his  ambition,  he  was  anxious  to  do 
all  he  could  to  work  the  South  up  to  the  high 
est  pitch  of  irritation,  and  keep  her  there  until 
there  was  a  dissolution  of  the  Union.  Benton 
evidently  thought  that  this  was  the  case  ;  and 
in  reading  the  constant  threats  of  nullification 
and  secession  which  run  through  all  Calhoun's 
speeches,  and  the  innumerable  references  he 
makes  to  the  alleged  fact  that  he  had  come  off 
victorious  in  his  treasonable  struggle  over  the 
tariff  in  1833,  it  is  difficult  not  to  accept  Ben- 
ton's  view  of  the  matter.  He  always  spoke  of 
Calhoun  with  extreme  aversion,  and  there  were 
probably  moments  when  he  was  inclined  heartily 
to  sympathize  with  Jackson's  death-bed  regret 
that  he  had  not  hung  the  South  Carolina  Kulli- 
fier.  Doubtless  in  private  life,  or  as  regards 
any  financial  matters,  Calhoun's  conduct  was 
always  blameless  ;  but  it  may  well  be  that  he 
has  received  far  more  credit  for  purity  of  motive 
in  his  public  conduct  than  his  actions  fairly  en 
title  him  to. 

Calhoun  was  also  greatly  exercised  over  the 


SLAVE   QUESTION  APPEARS  IN  POLITICS.    169 

circulation  of  abolition  documents  in  the  South. 
At  bis  request  a  committee  of  five  was  ap 
pointed  to  draft  a  bill  on  tbe  subject ;  he  was 
chairman,  and  three  of  the  other  four  members 
were  from  the  Slave  States ;  yet  his  report  was 
so  extreme  that  only  one  of  the  latter  would 
sign  it  with  him.  He  introduced  into  it  a  long 
argument  to  the  effect  that  the  Constitution 
was  a  mere  compact  between  sovereign  states, 
and  inferentially  that  nullification  and  secession 
were  justifiable  and  constitutional  ;  and  then 
drew  a  vivid  picture  of  the  unspeakable  horrors 
with  which,  as  he  contended,  the  action  of  the 
Northern  Abolitionists  menaced  the  South.  The 
bill  subjected  to  penalties  any  postmaster  who 
should  knowingly  receive  and  put  into  the  mail 
any  publication  touching  slavery,  to  go  into 
any  state  which  had  forbidden  by  law  the  cir 
culation  of  such  a  publication.  In  discussing 
this  bill  he  asserted  that  Congress,  in  refusing 
to  pass  it,  would  be  cooperating  with  the  Aboli 
tionists  ;  and  then  he  went  on  to  threaten  as 
usual  that  in  such  case  nullification  or  secession 
would  become  necessary.  Benton  had  become 
pretty  well  tired  of  these  threats,  his  attach 
ment  to  the  Union  even  exceeding  his  dislike 
to  seeing  slavery  meddled  with ;  and  he  headed 
the  list  of  half  a  dozen  Southern  senators  who 
joined  with  the  bulk  of  the  Northerners  in  de- 


170  THOMAS   HART  BEN  TON. 

feating  the  bill,  which  was  lost  by  a  vote  of 
twenty-five  to  nineteen.  A  few  of  the  North 
ern  "  dough-faces  "  voted  with  Calhoun.  There 
is  a  painfully  striking  contrast  between  the 
courage  shown  by  Benton,  a  slave-holder  with 
a  slave-holding  constituency,  in  opposing  this 
bill,  and  the  obsequious  subserviency  to  the  ex 
treme  Southern  feeling  shown  on  the  same  oc 
casion  by  Wright,  Van  Buren,  and  Buchanan 
—  fit  representatives  of  the  sordid  and  odious 
political  organizations  of  New  York  and  Penn 
sylvania. 

Several  other  questions  came  up  towards  the 
end  of  Jackson's  administration  which  were 
more  or  less  remotely  affected  by  the  feeling 
about  slavery.  Benton  succeeded  in  getting  a 
bill  through  to  extend  the  boundaries  of  the 
State  of  Missouri  so  as  to  take  in  territory  lying 
northwest  of  her  previous  limit,  the  Indian 
title  to  which  was  extinguished  by  treaty.  This 
annexed  land  lay  north  of  the  boundary  for 
slave  territory  established  by  the  Missouri  Com 
promise  ;  but  Benton  experienced  no  difficulty 
in  getting  his  bill  through.  It  was  not,  how 
ever,  in  the  least  a  move  designed  in  the  inter 
ests  of  the  slave  power.  Missouri's  feeling  was 
precisely  that  which  would  actuate  Oregon  or 
Washington  Territory  to-day,  if  either  wished 
to  annex  part  of  Northern  Idaho. 


SLAVE  QUESTION  APPEARS  IN  POLITICS.    171 

The  territories  of  Arkansas  and  Michigan  had 
applied  for  admission  into  the  Union  as  states  ; 
and  as  one  would  be  a  free  and  the  other  a  slave 
state,  it  was  deemed  proper  that  they  should 
come  in  together.  Benton  himself  urged  the! 
admission  of  the  free  state  of  Michigan,  while 
the  interests  of  Arkansas  were  confided  to 
Buchanan  of  Pennsylvania.  The  slavery  ques 
tion  entered  but  little  into  the  matter  ;  although 
some  objections  were  raised  on  that  score,  as 
well  as  on  account  of  the  irregular  manner  in 
which  the  would-be  states  had  acted  in  prepar 
ing  for  admission.  The  real  ground  of  opposi 
tion  to  the  admission  of  the  two  new  states  was 
political,  as  it  was  known  that  they  could  both 
be  relied  upon  for  Democratic  majorities  at 
the  approaching  presidential  election.  Many 
Whigs,  therefore,  both  from  the  North  and  the 
South,  opposed  it. 

The  final  removal  of  the  Cherokees  from 
Georgia  and  Alabama  was  brought  about  in 
1836  by  means  of  a  treaty  with  those  Indians. 
Largely  through  the  instrumentality  of  Benton, 
and  in  spite  of  the  opposition  of  Clay,  Calhoun, 
and  Webster,  this  instrument  was  ratified  in  the 
Senate  by  the  close  vote  of  thirty-one  to  fifteen. 
Although  new  slave  territory  was  thus  acquired, 
the  vote  on  the  treaty  was  factional  and  not 
sectional,  being  equally  divided  between  the 


172        THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

Northern  and  the  Southern  States,  Callioun 
and  six  other  Southern  senators  opposing  it, 
chiefly  from  hostility  to  the  administration. 
The  removal  of  the  Indians  was  probably  a  ne 
cessity  ;  undoubtedly  it  worked  hardship  in  in 
dividual  instances,  but  on  the  whole  it  did  not 
in  the  least  retard  the  civilization  of  the  tribe, 
which  was  fully  paid  for  its  losses  ;  and  more 
over,  in  its  new  home,  continued  to  make  prog 
ress  in  every  way  until  it  became  involved  in 
the  great  civil  war,  and  received  a  setback  from 
which  it  has  not  yet  recovered.  These  Chero- 
kees  were  almost  the  last  Indians  left  in  any 
number  east  of  the  Mississippi,  and  their  re 
moval  solved  the  Indian  problem  so  far  as  the 
old  states  were  concerned. 

Later  on  Benton  went  to  some  trouble  to 
disprove  the  common  statement  that  we  have 
robbed  the  original  Indian  occupants  of  their 
lands.  He  showed  by  actual  statistics  that  up 
to  1840  we  had  paid  to  the  Indians  eighty-five 
millions  of  dollars  for  land  purchases,  which 
was  over  five  times  as  much  as  the  United 
States  gave  the  great  Napoleon  for  Louisiana  ; 
and  about  three  times  as  much  as  we  paid 
France,  Spain,  and  Mexico  together  for  the 
purchase  of  Louisiana,  Florida,  and  California  ; 
while  the  amount  of  land  received  in  return 
would  not  equal  any  one  of  these  purchases, 


SLAVE  QUESTION  APPEARS  JN  POLITICS.    173 

and  was  but  a  fractional  part  of  Lousiana  or 
California.  We  paid  the  Cherokees  for  their 
territory  exactly  as  much  as  we  paid  the  French, 
at  the  height  of  their  power,  for  Louisiana ; 
while  as  to  the  Creek  and  Choctaw  nations,  we 
paid  each  more  for  their  lands  than  we  paid  for 
Louisiana  and  Florida  combined.  The  dealings 
of  the  government  with  the  Indian  have  often 
been  unwise,  and  sometimes  unjust;  but  they 
are  very  far  indeed  from  being  so  black  as  is 
commonly  representedt  especially  when  the  tre 
mendous  difficulties  of  the  case  are  taken  into 
account. 

Far  more  important  than  any  of  these  mat 
ters  was  the  acknowledgment  of  the  indepen 
dence  of  Texas  ;  and  in  this,  as  well  as  in  the 
troubles  with  Mexico  which  sprang  from  it, 
slavery  again  played  a  prominent  part,  although 
not  nearly  so  important  at  first  as  has  com 
monly  been  represented.  Doubtless  the  slave 
holders  worked  hard  to  secure  additional  terri 
tory  out  of  which  to  form  new  slave  states  ;  but 
Texas  and  California  would  have  been  in  the 
end  taken  by  us,  had  there  not  been  a  single 
slave  in  the  Mississippi  valley.  The  greed  for 
the  conquest  of  new  lands  which  characterized 
the  Western  people  had  nothing  whatever  to  do 
with  the  fact  that  some  of  them  owned  slaves. 
Long  before  there  had  been  so  much  as  the 


174  THOMAS   HART  BE  NT  ON. 

faintest  foreshadowing  of  the  importance  which 
the  slavery  question  was  to  assume,  the  West 
had  been  eagerly  pressing  on  to  territorial  con 
quest,  and  had  been  chafing  and  fretting  at  the 
restraint  put  upon  it,  and  at  the  limits  set  to 
its  strivings  by  the  treaties  established  with 
foreign  powers.  The  first  settlers  beyond  the 
Alleghanies,  and  their  immediate  successors, 
who  moved  down  along  the  banks  of  the  Ohio, 
the  Cumberland,  and  the  Tennessee,  and  thence 
out  to  the  Mississippi  itself,  were  not  generally 
slave-holders  ;  but  they  were  all  as  anxious  to 
wrest  the  Mississippi  valley  from  the  control  of 
the  French  as  their  descendants  were  to  overrun 
the  Spanish  lands  lying  along  the  Rio  Grande. 
In  other  words,  slavery  had  very  little  to  do 
with  the  Western  aggressions  on  Mexican  ter 
ritory,  however  it  might  influence  the  views  of 
Southern  statesmen  as  to  lending  support  to 
the  Western  schemes. 

The  territorial  boundaries  of  all  the  great 
powers  originally  claiming  the  soil  of  the  West 
—  France,  Spain,  and  the  United  States  —  were 
very  ill-defined,  there  being  no  actual  possession 
of  the  lands  in  dispute,  and  each  power  making 
a  great  showing  on  its  own  map.  If  the  ex 
treme  views  of  any  one  were  admitted,  its  adver 
sary,  for  the  time  being,  would  have  had  noth 
ing.  Thus  before  the  treaty  of  1819  with  Spain 


SLAVE  QUESTION  APPEARS  JN  POLITICS.     175 

our  nominal  boundaries  and  those  of  the  latter 
power  in  the  West  overlapped  each  other ;  and 
the  extreme  Western  men  persisted  in  saying 
that  we  had  given  up  some  of  the  territory 
which  belonged  to  us  because  we  had  consented 
to  adopt  a  middle  line  of  division,  and  had  not 
insisted  upon  being  allowed  the  full  extent  of 
our  claims.  Benton  always  took  this  view  of 
it,  insisting  that  we  had  given  up  our  rights 
by  the  adoption  of  this  treaty.  Many  South 
erners  improved  on  this  idea,  and  spoke  of  the 
desirability  of  "  re-annexing  '!  the  territory  we 
had  surrendered,  —  endeavoring  by  the  use  of 
this  very  inappropriate  word  to  give  a  color  of 
right  to  their  proceedings.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
it  was  inevitable,  as  well  as  in  the  highest  de 
gree  desirable  for  the  good  of  humanity  at  large, 
that  the  American  people  should  ultimately 
crowd  out  the  Mexicans  from  their  sparsely  pop 
ulated  Northern  provinces.  But  it  was  quite 
as  desirable  that  this  should  not  be  done  in  the 
interests  of  slavery. 

American  settlers  had  begun  to  press  into  the 
outlying  Spanish  province  of  Texas  before  the 
treaty  of  1819  was  ratified.  Their  numbers 
went  on  increasing,  and  at  first  the  Mexican 
government,  having  achieved  independence  of 
Spain,  encouraged  their  incoming.  But  it  soon 
saw  that  their  presence  boded  danger,  and  for' 


176         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

bade  further  immigration  ;  without  effect,  how 
ever,  as  the  settlers  and  adventurers  came 
thronging  in  as  fast  as  ever.  The  Americans 
had  brought  their  slaves  with  them,  and  when 
the  Mexican  government  issued  a  decree  liber 
ating  all  slaves,  they  refused  to  be  bound  by  it ; 
and  this  decree  was  among  the  reasons  alleged 
for  their  revolt.  It  has  been  represented  as  the 
chief  if  not  the  sole  cause  of  the  rebellion  ;  but  in 
reality  it  was  not  the  cause  at  all ;  it  was  merely 
one  of  the  occasions.  Long  before  slavery  had 
been  abolished  in  Mexico,  and  before  it  had  be 
come  an  exciting  question  in  the  United  States, 
the  infant  colony  of  Texas,  when  but  a  few 
months  old,  had  made  an  abortive  attempt  at 
insurrection.  Any  one  who  has  ever  been  on 
the  frontier,  and  who  knows  anything  whatever 
of  the  domineering,  masterful  spirit  and  bitter 
race  prejudices  of  the  white  frontiersmen,  will 
acknowledge  at  once  that  it  was  out  of  the 

?D 

question  that  the  Texans  should  long  continue 
under  Mexican  rule  ;  and  it  would  have  been 
a  great  misfortune  if  they  had.  It  was  out  of 
the  question  to  expect  them  to  submit  to  the 
mastery  of  the  weaker  race,  which  they  were 
supplanting.  Whatever  might  be  the  pretexts 
alleged  for  revolt,  the  real  reasons  were  to  be 
found  in  the  deeply-marked  difference  of  race, 
and  in  the  absolute  unfitness  of  the  Mexicans 


SLAVE  QUESTION  APPEARS  IN  POLITICS.     177 

then  to  govern  themselves,  to  say  nothing  of 
governing  others.  During  the  dozen  years  that 
the  American  colony  in  Texas  formed  part  of 
Mexico,  the  government  of  the  latter  went 
through  revolution  after  revolution, — republic, 
empire,  and  military  dictatorship  following  one 
another  in  bewildering  succession.  A  state  of 
things  like  this  in  the  central  government,  espe 
cially  when  the  latter  belonged  to  a  race  alien 
in  blood,  language,  religion,  and  habits  of  life, 
would  warrant  any  community  in  determining 
to  shift  for  itself.  Such  would  probably  have 
been  the  result  even  on  people  as  sober  and 
peaceable  as  the  Texan  settlers  were  warlike, 
reckless,  and  overbearing. 

But  the  majority  of  those  who  fought  for 
Texan  independence  were  not  men  who  bad  al 
ready  settled  in  that  territory,  but,  on  the  con 
trary,  were  adventurers  from  the  States,  who 
had  come  to  help  their  kinsmen  and  to  win  for 
themselves,  by  their  own  prowess,  homes  on 
what  was  then  Mexican  soil.  It  may  as  well  be 
frankly  admitted  that  the  conduct  of  the  Amer 
ican  frontiersmen  all  through  this  contest  can 
be  justified  on  no  possible  plea  of  international 
morality  or  law.  Still,  we  cannot  judge  them 
by  the  same  standard  we  should  apply  to  the 
dealings  between  highly  civilized  powers  of  ap 
proximately  the  same  grade  of  virtue  and  intel- 

12 


178  THOMAS  HART  BENT  ON. 

ligence.  Two  nations  may  be  contemporane 
ous  so  far  as  mere  years  go,  and  yet,  for  all  that, 
may  be  existing  among  surroundings  which 
practically  are  centuries  apart.  Tlie  nineteenth 
century  on  the  banks  of  the  Thames,  the  Seine, 
and  the  Rhine,  or  even  of  the  Hudson  and  the 
Potomac,  was  one  thing  ;  the  nineteenth  century 
in  the  valley  of  the  Rio  Grande  was  another  and 
quite  a  different  thing. 

The  conquest  of  Texas  should  properly  be 
classed  with  conquests  like  those  of  the  Norse 
sea-rovers.  The  virtues  and  faults  alike  of  the 
Texans  were  those  of  a  barbaric  age.  They 
were  restless,  brave,  and  eager  for  adventure, 
excitement,  and  plunder ;  they  were  warlike, 
resolute,  and  enterprising;  they  had  all  the 
marks  of  a  young  and  hardy  race,  flushed  with 
the  pride  of  strength  and  self-confidence.  On 
the  other  hand  they  showed  again  and  again  the 
barbaric  vices  of  boastfulness,  ignorance,  and 
cruelty  ;  and  they  were  utterly  careless  of  the 
rights  of  others,  looking  upon  the  possessions  of 
all  weaker  races  as  simply  their  natural  prey. 
A  band  of  settlers  entering  Texas  was  troubled 
by  no  greater  scruples  of  conscience  than,  a 
thousand  years  before,  a  ship-load  of  Knut's  fol 
lowers  might  have  felt  at  landing  in  England  ; 
and  when  they  were  engaged  in  warfare  with 
the  Mexicans  they  could  count  with  certainty 


SLAVE  QUESTION  APPEARS  IN  POLITICS.     179 

upon  assistance  from  their  kinsfolk  who  had 
been  left  behind,  and  for  the  same  reasons  that 
had  enabled  Rolf's  Norsemen  on  the  sea-coast  of 
France  to  rely  confidently  on  Scandinavian  help 
in  their  quarrels  with  their  Karling  over-lords. 
The  great  Texan  hero,  Houston,  who  drank 
hard  and  fought  hard,  who  was  mighty  in  battle 
and  crafty  in  council,  with  his  reckless,  boastful 
courage  and  his  thirst  for  changes  and  risks  of 
ail  kinds,  his  propensity  fqr  private  brawling, 
and  his  queerly  blended  impulses  for  good  and 
evil,  might,  with  very  superficial  alterations  of 
character,  stand  as  the  type  of  an  old-world 
Viking  —  plus  the  virtue  of  a  deep  and  earn 
estly  patriotic  attachment  to  his  whole  coun 
try.  Indeed  his  career  was  as  picturesque  and 
romantic  as  that  of  Harold  Hardraada  himself, 
and,  to  boot,  was  much  more  important  in  its 
results. 

Thus  the  Texan  struggle  for  independence 
stirred  up  the  greatest  sympathy  and  enthu 
siasm  in  the  United  States.  The  administra 
tion  remained  nominally  neutral,  but  obviously 
sympathized  with  the  Texans,  permitting  arms 
and  men  to  be  sent  to  their  help,  w-ithout  hin 
drance,  and  indeed  doing  not  a  little  discredit 
able  bullying  in  the  diplomatic  dealing  with 
Mexico,  which  that  unfortunate  community  had 
her  hands  too  full  to  resent.  Still  we  did  not 


180  THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

commit  a  more  flagrant  breach  of  neutrality 
than,  for  instance,  England  was  at  the  same 
time  engaged  in  committing  in  reference  to  the 
civil  wars  in  Spain.  The  victory  of  San  Jacinto, 
in  which  Houston  literally  annihilated  a  Mex 
ican  force  twice  the  strength  of  his  own,  virtu 
ally  decided  the  contest ;  and  the  Senate  at 
once  passed  a  resolution  recognizing  the  inde 
pendence  of  Texas.  Calhoun  wished  that  body 
to  go  farther,  and  forthwith  admit  Texas  as  a 
state  into  the  Union  ;  but  Benton  and  his  col 
leagues  were  not  prepared  to  take  such  a  step 
at  so  early  a  date,  although  intending  of  course 
that  in  the  end  she  should  be  admitted.  There 
was  little  opposition  to  the  recognition  of  Texan 
independence,  although  a  few  members  of  the 
lower  house,  headed  by  Adams,  voted  against  it. 
While  a  cabinet  officer,  and  afterwards  as  pres 
ident,  Adams  had  done  all  that  he  could  to  pro 
cure  by  purchase  or  treaty  the  very  land  which 
was  afterwards  the  cause  of  our  troubles  with 
Mexico. 

Much  the  longest  and  most  elaborate  speech 
in  favor  of  the  recognition  of  Texan  indepen 
dence  was  made  by  Benton,  to  whom  the  sub 
ject  appealed  very  strongly.  He  announced 
emphatically  that  he  spoke  as  a  Western  sena 
tor,  voicing  the  feeling  of  the  West ;  and  he  was 
right.  The  opposition  to  the  growth  of  our 


SLAVE   QUESTION  APPEARS   IN  POLITICS.    181 

country  on  its  southwestern  frontier  was  al 
most  Confined  to  the  Northeast ;  the  West  as  a 
whole,  free  states  as  well  as  slave,  heartily  fa 
vored  the  movement.  The  settlers  of  Texas 
had  come  mainly,  it  is  true,  from  the  slave 
states ;  but  there  were  also  many  who  had  been 
born  north  of  the  Ohio.  It  was  a  matter  of 
comment  that  the  guns  used  at  San  Jacinto 
had  come  from  Cincinnati  —  and  so  had  some 
of  those  who  served  them. 

In  Benton's  speech  he  began  by  pointing  out 
the  impropriety  of  doing  what  Calhoun  had 
done  in  attempting  to  complicate  the  question 
of  the  recognition  of  Texan  independence  with 
the  admission  of  Texas  as  a  state.  He  then  pro 
ceeded  to  claim  for  us  a  good  deal  more  credit 
than  we  were  entitled  to  for  our  efforts  to 
preserve  neutrality ;  drew  a  very  true  picture 
of  the  commercial  bonds  that  united  us  to  Mex 
ico,  and  of  the  necessity  that  they  should  not  be 
lightly  broken ;  gave  a  spirited  sketch  of  the 
course  of  the  war  hitherto,  condemning  without 
stint  the  horrible  butcheries  committed  by  the 
Mexicans,  but  touching  gingerly  on  the  savage 
revenge  taken  by  the  Americans  in  their  turn ; 
and  ended  by  a  eulogy  of  the  Texans  them 
selves,  and  their  leaders. 

It  was  the  age  of  "spread-eagle"  speeches, 
and  many  of  Benton's  were  no  exception  to  the 


182         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

rule.  As  a  people  we  were  yet  in  a  condition 
of  raw,  crude  immaturity  ;  and  our  very  sensi 
tiveness  to  foreign  criticism  —  a  sensitiveness 
which  we  now  find  it  difficult  to  understand  — 
and  the  realization  of  our  own  awkwardness 
made  us  inclined  to  brag  about  and  exaggerate 
our  deeds.  Our  public  speakers  and  writers 
acquired  the  abominable  habit  of  speaking  of 
everything  and  everybody  in  the  United  States 
in  the  superlative ;  and  therefore,  as  we  claimed 
the  highest  rank  for  all  our  fourth-rate  men,  we 
put  it  out  of  our  power  to  do  justice  to  the 
really  first-rate  ones;  and  on  account  of  our 
continual  exaggerations  we  were  not  believed 
by  others,  and  hardly  even  believed  ourselves, 
when  we  presented  estimates  that  were  truthful. 
When  every  public  speaker  was  declared  to  be 
a  Demosthenes  or  a  Cicero,  people  failed  to  real 
ize  that  we  actually  had,  in  Webster,  the  great 
est  orator  of  the  century  ;  and  when  every  gen 
eral  who  whipped  an  Indian  tribe  was  likened 
to  Napoleon,  we  left  ourselves  no  words  with 
which  properly  to  characterize  the  really  heroic 
deeds  done  from  time  to  time  in  the  grim  fron 
tier  warfare.  All  Benton's  oratory  took  on  this 
lurid  coloring  ;  and  in  the  present  matter  his 
final  eulogy  of  the  Texan  warriors  was  greatly 
strained,  though  it  would  hardly  have  been  in 
his  power  to  pay  too  high  a  tribute  to  some  of 


SLAVE    QUESTION 


the  deeds  they  had  done.  It  wasTtEe  heroic 
age  of  the  Southwest ;  though,  as  with  every 
other  heroic  age,  there  were  plenty  of  failings, 
vices,  and  weaknesses  visible,  if  the  stand-point 
of  observation  was  only  close  enough. 


CHAPTER   IX. 
THE  CHILDREN'S  TEETH  ARE  SET  ON  EDGE. 

IN  his  dealings  with  the  Bank  and  his  dis 
posal  of  the  deposits  Jackson  ate  sour  grapes  to 
his  heart's  content ;  and  now  the  teeth  of  his 
adopted  child  Van  Buren  were  to  be  get  on 
edge. 

Van  Buren  was  the  first  product  of  what  are 
now  called  "  machine  politics "  that  was  put 
into  the  presidential  chair.  He  owed  his  ele 
vation  solely  to  his  own  dexterous  political 
manipulation,  and  to  the  fact  that,  for  his  own 
selfish  ends,  and  knowing  perfectly  well  their 
folly,  he  had  yet  favored  or  connived  at  all 
the  actions  into  which  the  administration  had 
been  led  either  through  Jackson's  ignorance  and 
violence,  or  by  the  crafty  unscrupulousness 
and  limited  knowledge  of  the  Kitchen  Cabinet. 
The  people  at  large  would  never  have  thought 
of  him  for  president  of  their  own  accord;  but  he 
had  become  Jackson's  political  legatee,  partly 
because  he  had  personally  endeared  himself  to 
the  latter,  and  partly  because  the  politicians 


CHILDREN'S   TEETH  ARE   SET  ON  EDGE.    185 

felt  that  he  was  a  man  whom  they  could  trust. 
The  Jacksonian  Democracy  was  already  com 
pletely  ruled  by  a  machine,  of  which  the  most 
important  cogs  were  the  countless  office-holders, 
whom  the  spoils  system  had  already  converted 
into  a  band  of  well-drilled  political  mercenaries. 
A  political  machine  can  only  be  brought  to  a 
state  of  high  perfection  in  a  party  containing 
very  many  ignorant  and  uneducated  voters ; 
and  the  Jacksonian  Democracy  held  in  its 
ranks  the  mass  of  the  ignorance  of  the  country. 
Besides  this  such  an  organization  requires,  in 
order  that  it  may  do  its  most  effective  work,  to 
have  as  its  leader  and  figure-head  a  man  who 
really  has  a  great  hold  on  the  people  at  large, 
and  wrho  yet  can  be  managed  by  such  politi 
cians  as  possess  the  requisite  adroitness ;  and 
Jackson  fulfilled  both  these  conditions.  The  fa 
mous  Kitchen  Cabinet  was  so  called  because 
its  members  held  no  official  positions,  and  yet 
were  known  to  have  Jackson  more  under  their 
influence  than  was  the  case  with  his  nominal 
advisers.  They  stood  as  the  first  representa 
tives  of  a  type  common  enough  afterwards,  and 
of  which  Thurlow  Weed  was  perhaps  the  best 
example.  They  were  men  who  held  no  public 
position,  and  yet  devoted  their  whole  time  to 
politics,  and  pulled  the  strings  in  obedience  to 
which  the  apparent  public  leaders  moved.  ' 


186  THOMAS  HART  BENT  ON. 

Jackson  liked  Van  Buren  because  the  latter 
had  served  him  both  personally  and  politically 
—  indeed  Jackson  was  incapable  of  distinguish 
ing  between  a  political  and  a  personal  service. 
This  liking,  however,  would  not  alone  have  ad 
vanced  Van  Buren's  interests,  if  the  latter,  who 
was  himself  a  master  in  the  New  York  state 
machine,  had  not  also  succeeded  in  enlisting  the 
good-will  and  self-interest  of  the  members  of 
the  Kitchen  Cabinet  and  the  other  intimate  ad 
visers  of  the  president.  These  first  got  Jack 
son  himself  thoroughly  committed  to  Van 
Buren,  and  then  used  his  name  and  enormous 
influence  with  the  masses,  coupled  with  their 
own  mastery  of  machine  methods,  to  bring 
about  the  New  Yorker's  nomination.  In  both 
these  moves  they  had  been  helped,  and  Van 
Buren's  chances  had  been  immensely  improved, 
by  an  incident  that  had  seemed  at  the  time  very 
unfortunate  for  the  latter.  When  he  was  sec 
retary  of  state,  in  carrying  on  negotiations  with 
Great  Britain  relative  to  the  West  India  trade, 
he  had  so  far  forgotten  what  was  due  to  the  dig 
nity  of  the  nation  as  to  allude  disparagingly, 
while  thus  communicating  with  a  foreign  power, 
to  the  course  pursued  by  the  previous  adminis 
tration.  This  extension  of  party  lines  into  our 
foreign  diplomacy  was  discreditable  to  the 
whole  country.  The  anti-administration  men 


CHILDREN'S  TEETH  ARE  SET  ON  EDGE.  187 

bitterly  resented  it,  and  emphasized  their  resent 
ment  by  rejecting  the  nomination  of  Van  Buren 
when  Jackson  wished  to  make  him  minister  to 
England.  Their  action  was  perfectly  proper, 
and  Van  Buren,  by  right,  should  have  suffered 
for  his  undignified  and  unpatriotic  conduct. 
But  instead  of  this,  and  in  accordance  with  the 
eternal  unfitness  of  things,  what  really  happened 
was  that  his  rejection  by  the  Senate  actually 
helped  him ;  for  Jackson  promptly  made  the 
quarrel  his  own,  and  the  masses  blindly  followed 
their  idol.  Beaton  exultingly  and  truthfully 
said  that  the  president's  foes  had  succeeded  in 
breaking  a  minister  only  to  make  a  president. 

Van  Buren  faithfully  served  the  mammon  of 
unrighteousness,  both  in  his  own  state  and,  later 
on,  at  Washington  ;  and  he  had  his  reward, 
for  he  was  advanced  to  the  highest  offices  in  the 
gift  of  the  nation.  He  had  no  reason  to  blame 
his  own  conduct  for  his  final  downfall ;  he  got 
just  as  far  along  as  he  could  possibly  get ;  he 
succeeded  because  of,  and  not  in  spite  of,  his 
moral  shortcomings ;  if  he  had  always  governed 
his  actions  by  a  high  moral  standard  he  would 
probably  never  have  been  heard  of.  Still,  there 
is  some  comfort  in  reflecting  that,  exactly  as  he 
was  made  president  for  no  virtue  of  his  own, 
but  simply  on  account  of  being  Jackson's  heir, 
so  he  was  turned  out  of  the  office,  not  for  per- 


188  THOMAS  HART  BEN  TON. 

sonal  failure,  but  because  he  was  taken  as 
scapegoat,  and  had  the  sins  of  his  political 
fathers  visited  on  his  own  head. 

The  opposition  to  the  election  of  Van  Buren 
was  very  much  disorganized,  the  Whig  party 
not  yet  having  solidified, — indeed  it  always 
remained  a  somewhat  fluid  body.  The  election 
did  not  have  the  slightest  sectional  significance, 
slavery  not  entering  into  it,  and  both  Northern 
and  Southern  States  voting  without  the  least 
reference  to  the  geographical  belongings  of  the 
candidates.  He  was  the  last  true  Jacksonian 
Democrat  —  Union  Democrat  —  who  became 
president ;  the  South  Carolina  separatists  and 
many  of  their  fellows  refused  to  vote  for  him. 
The  Democrats  who  came  after  him,  on  the 
contrary,  all  had  leanings  to  the  separatist  ele 
ment  which  so  soon  obtained  absolute  control 
of  the  party,  to  the  fierce  indignation  of  men 
like  Benton,  Houston,  and  the  other  old  Jack- 
sonians,  whose  sincere  devotion  to  the  Union 
will  always  entitle  them  to  the  gratitude  of 
every  true  American.  As  far  as  slavery  was 
concerned,  however,  the  Southerners  had  hith 
erto  had  nothing  whatever  to  complain  of  in 
Van  Buren's  attitude.  He  was  careful  to  in 
form  them  in  his  inaugural  address  that  he 
would  not  sanction  any  attempt  to  interfere 
with  the  institution,  whether  by  abolishing  it  in 


CHILDREN'S  TEETH  ARE  SET  ON  EDGE.  189 

the  District  of  Columbia  or  in  any  other  way 
distasteful  to  the  South.  He  also  expressed  a 
general  hope  that  he  would  be  able  throughout 
to  follow  in  the  footsteps  of  Jackson. 

He  had  hardly  been  elected  before  the  ruinous 
financial  policy  to  which  he  had  been  party,  but 
of  which  the  effects,  it  must  in  justice  be  said, 
were  aggravated  by  many  of  the  actions  of  the 
Whigs,  began  to  bear  fruit  after  its  kind.  The 
use  made  of  the  surplus  was  bad  enough,  but 
the  withdrawal  of  the  United  States  deposits 
from  one  responsible  bank  and  their  distribu 
tion  among  scores  of  others,  many  of  which 
were  in  the  most  rickety  condition,  was  a  step 
better  calculated  than  any  other  to  bring  about 
a  financial  crash.  It  gave  a  stimulus  to  extrav 
agance,  and  evoked  the  wildest  spirit  of  specu 
lation  that  the  country  had  yet  seen.  The  local 
banks,  to  whom  the  custody  of  the  public  mon 
eys  had  been  intrusted,  used  them  as  funds 
which  they  and  their  customers  could  hazard 
for  the  chance  of  gain ;  and  the  gambling  spirit, 
always  existent  in  the  American  mercantile 
community,  was  galvanized  into  furious  life. 
The  public  dues  were  payable  in  the  paper  of 
these  deposit  banks  and  of  the  countless  others 
that  were  even  more  irresponsible.  The  de 
posit  banks  thus  became  filled  up  with  a  motley 
mass  of  more  or  less  worthless  bank  paper, 


190         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

which  thus  formed  the  "surplus,"  of  which  the 
distribution  had  caused  Congress  so  much  worry. 
Their  condition  was  desperate,  as  they  had  been 
managed  with  the  most  reckless  disregard  for 
the  morrow.  Many  of  them  had  hardly  kept 
as  much  specie  in  hand  as  would  amount  to 
one  fiftieth  of  the  aggregate  of  their  deposits 
and  other  immediate  liabilities. 

The  people  themselves  were  of  course  prima 
rily  responsible  for  the  then  existing  state  of 
affairs  ;  but  the  government  had  done  all  in  its 
power  to  make  matters  worse.  Panics  were 
certain  to  occur  more  or  less  often  in  so  specu 
lative  and  venturesome  a  mercantile  commu 
nity,  where  there  was  such  heedless  trust  in  the 
future  and  such  recklessness  in  the  use  of 
credit.  But  the  government,  by  its  actions,  im 
mensely  increased  the  severity  of  this  particu 
lar  panic,  and  became  the  prime  factor  in  pre 
cipitating  its  advent.  Benton  tried  to  throw 
the  blame  mainly  on  the  bankers  and  politi 
cians,  who,  he  alleged,  had  formed  an  alliance 
for  the  overthrow  of  the  administration  ;  but 
he  made  the  plea  more  half-heartedly  than 
usual,  and  probably  in  his  secret  soul  acknowl 
edged  its  puerility. 

The  mass  of  the  people  were  still  happy  in 
the  belief  that  all  things  were  working  well, 
and  that  their  show  of  unexampled  prosperity 


CHILDREN'S  TEETH  ARE  SET  ON  EDGE.  191 

and  business  activity  denoted  a  permanent  and 
healthy  condition.  Yet  all  the  signs  pointed 
to  a  general  collapse  at  no  distant  date ;  an  era 
of  general  bank  suspensions,  of  depreciated 
currency,  and  of  insolvency  of  the  federal  treas 
ury  was  at  hand.  No  one  but  Benton,  how 
ever,  seemed  able  to  read  the  signs  aright,  and 
his  foreboding  utterances  were  laughed  at  or 
treated  with  scorn  by  his  fellow  statesmen. 
He  recalled  the  memory  of  the  times  of  1818- 
19,  when  the  treasury  reports  of  one  year 
showed  a  superfluity  of  revenue  of  which  there 
was  no  want,  and  those  of  the  next  showed  a  . 
deficit  which  required  to  be  relieved  by  a  loan ; 
and  he  foretold  an  infinitely  worse  result  from 
the  inflation  of  the  paper  system,  saying :  — 

Are  we  not  at  this  moment,  and  from  the  same 
cause,  realizing  the  first  part  —  the  elusive  and 
treacherous  part  —  of  this  picture  ?  and  must  not  the 
other,  the  sad  and  real  sequel,  speedily  follow  ?  The 
day  of  revulsion  in  its  effects  may  be  more  or  less 
disastrous  ;  but  come  it  must.  The  present  bloat  in 
the  paper  system  cannot  continue  ;  violent  contrac 
tion  must  follow  enormous  expansion  ;  a  scene  of  dis 
tress  and  suffering  must  ensue  —  to  come  of  itself  out 
of  the  present  state  of  things,  without  being  stimulated 
and  helped  on  by  our  unwise  legislation.  .  .  .  7am 
one  of  those  who  promised  gold,  not  paper  ;  1  did 
not  join  in  putting  down  the  Bank  of  the  United 


192        THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

States  1o  put  up  a  wilderness  of  local  banks.  1  did 
not  join  in  putting  down  tlic  currency  of  a  national 
bank  to  put  up  a  national  paper  currency  of  a  thou 
sand  local  banks.  I  did  not  strike  Caesar  to  make 
Antony  master  of  Rome. 

These  last  sentences  referred  to  the  passage 
of  the  act  repealing  the  specie  circular  and 
making  the  notes  of  the  banks  receivable  in  pay 
ment  of  federal  dues.  The  act  was  most  mis 
chievous,  and  Benton's  criticisms  both  of  it  and 
of  the  great  Whig  senator  who  pressed  it  were 
perfectly  just ;  but  they  apply  with  quite  as 
.much  weight  to  Jackson's  dealings  with  the  de 
posits,  which  Benton  had  defended. 

Benton  foresaw  the  coming  of  the  panic  so 
clearly,  and  was  so  particularly  uneasy  about  the 
immediate  effects  upon  the  governmental  treas 
ury,  that  he  not  only  spoke  publicly  on  the  mat 
ter  in  the  Senate,  but  even  broached  the  subject 
in  the  course  of  a  private  conversation  with  the 
president-elect,  to  get  him  to  try  to  make  what 
preparations  he  could.  Van  Buren,  cool,  skill 
ful,  and  far-sighted  politician  though  he  was,  on 
this  occasion  showed  that  he  was  infected  with 
the  common  delusion  as  to  the  solidity  of  the 
country's  business  prosperity.  He  was  very 
friendly  with  Benton,  and  was  trying  to  get 
him  to  take  a  position  in  his  cabinet,  which  the 
latter  refused,  preferring  service  in  the  Senate; 


CHILDREN'S    TEETH  ARE  SET   ON  EDGE.     193 

but  now  be  listened  with  scant  courtesy  to  the '» 
warning,  and  paid  no  heed  to  it.  Benton,  an  in 
tensely  proud  man,  would  not  speak  again  ;  and 
everything  went  on  as  before.  The  law  distrib 
uting  the  surplus  among  the  states  began  to  take 
effect ;  under  its  operations  drafts  for  millions 
of  dollars  were  made  on  the  banks  containing 
the  deposits,  and  these  banks,  already  sinking, 
were  utterly  unable  to  honor  them.  It  would 
have  been  impossible,  under  any  circumstances, 
for  the  president  to  ward  off  the  blow,  but  he 
might  at  least,  by  a  little  forethought  and  prep 
aration,  have  saved  the  government  from  some 
galling  humiliations.  Had  Benton's  advice  been 
followed,  the  moneys  called  for  by  the  appro 
priation  acts  might  have  been  drawn  from  the 
banks,  and  the  disbursing  officers  might  have 
been  prevented  from  depositing  in  them  the 
sums  which  they  drew  from  the  treasury  to 
provide  for  their  ordinary  expenses ;  thus  the 
government  would  have  been  spared  the  dis 
grace  of  being  obliged  to  stop  the  actual  daily 
payments  to  the  public  servants ;  and  the  na 
tion  would  not  have  seen  such  a  spectacle  as  its 
rulers  presented  when  they  had  not  a  dollar 
with  which  to  pay  even  a  day  laborer,  while  at 
the  same  time  a  law  was  standing  on  the  stat 
ute-book  providing  for  the  distribution  of  forty 
millions  of  nominal  surplus. 

13 


194         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

No  effort  was  made  to  stave  off  even  so  much 
of  the  impending  disaster  as  was  at  that  late 
date  preventable  ;  and  a  few  days  after  Van 
Buren's  inauguration  the  country  was  in  the 
throes  of  the  worst  and  most  widespread  finan 
cial  panic  it  has  ever  seen.  The  distress  was 
fairly  appalling  both  in  its  intensity  and  in  its 
universal  distribution.  All  the  banks  stopped 
payment,  and  bankruptcy  was  universal.  Bank 
paper  depreciated  with  frightful  rapidity,  espe 
cially  in  the  West ;  specie  increased  in  value  so 
that  all  the  coin  in  the  country,  down  to  the 
lowest  denomination,  was  almost  immediately 
taken  out  of  circulation,  being  either  hoarded, 
or  gathered  for  shipment  abroad  as  bullion. 
For  small  change  every  kind  of  device  was  made 
use  of,  —  tokens,  bank-bills  for  a  few  cents  each, 
or  brass  and  iron  counters. 

Ben  ton  and  others  pretended  to  believe  that 
the  panic  was  the  result  of  a  deep-laid  plot  on 
the  part  of  the  rich  classes,  who  controlled  the 
banks,  to  excite  popular  hostility  against  the 
Jacksonian  Democracy,  on  account  of  the  caste 
antagonism  which  these  same  richer  classes  were 
supposed  to  feel  towards  the  much -vaunted 
"  party  of  the  people  ;  "  and  as  Benton's  mental 
vision  was  singularly  warped  in  regard  to  some 
subjects,  it  is  possible  that  the  belief  was  not  al 
together  a  pretense.  It  is  entirely  unnecessary 


CHILDREN'S  TEETH  ARE  SET  ON  EDGE.  195 

now  seriously  to  discuss  the  proposition  that  it 
would  be  possible  to  drag  the  commercial  classes 
into  so  widespread  and  profoundly  secret  a  con 
spiracy,  with  such  a  vague  end  in  view,  and 
with  the  certainty  that  they  themselves  would 
be,  from  a  business  stand-point,  the  main  suf 
ferers. 

The  efforts  made  by  Ben  ton  and  the  other 
Jacksonians  to  stem  the  tide  of  public  feeling 
and  direct  it  through  the  well-worn  channel  of 
suspicious  fear  of,  and  anger  at,  the  banks,  as 
the  true  authors  of  the  general  wretchedness, 
were  unavailing ;  the  stream  swelled  into  a  tor 
rent  and  ran  like  a  mill-race  in  the  opposite 
way.  The  popular  clamor  against  the  admin 
istration  was  deafening ;  and  if  much  of  it  was 
based  on  good  grounds,  much  of  it  was  also  un 
reasonable.  But  a  very  few  years  before  the 
Jacksonians  had  appealed  to  a  senseless  public 
dislike  of  the  so-called  "  money  power,"  in  order 
to  help  themselves  to  victory ;  and  now  they 
had  the  chagrin  of  seeing  an  only  less  irrational 
outcry  raised  against  themselves  in  turn,  and 
used  to  oust  them  from  their  places,  with  the 
same  effectiveness  which  had  previously  at 
tended  their  own  frothy  and  loud-mouthed  dec 
lamations.  The  people  were  more  than  ready 
to  listen  to  any  one  who  could  point  out,  or 
pretend  to  point  out,  the  authors  of,  and  the 


196         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

reasons  for,  the  calamities  that  had  befallen 
them.  Their  condition  was  pitiable  ;  and  this 
was  especially  true  in  the  newer  and  Western 
states,  where  in  many  places  there  was  abso 
lutely  no  money  at  all  in  circulation,  even  the 
men  of  means  not  being  able  to  get  enough  coin 
or  its  equivalent  to  make  the  most  ordinary  pur 
chases.  Trade  was  at  a  complete  stand-still ; 
laborers  were  thrown  out  of  employment  and  left 
almost  starving ;  farmers,  merchants,  mechanics, 
craftsmen  of  every  sort,  —  all  alike  were  in  the 
direst  distress.  They  naturally,  in  seeking  re 
lief,  turned  to  the  government,  it  being  almost 
always  the  case  that  the  existing  administration 
receives  more  credit  if  the  country  is  prosperous, 
and  greater  blame  if  it  is  not,  than  in  either 
case  it  is  rightfully  entitled  to.  The  Democracy 
was  now  held  to  strict  reckoning,  not  only  for 
some  of  its  numerous  real  sins  but  also  for  a 
good  many  imaginary  ones ;  and  the  change  in 
the  political  aspect  of  many  of  the  common 
wealths  was  astounding.  Jackson's  own  home 
State  of  Tennessee  became  strongly  Whig ;  and 
Van  Buren  had  the  mortification  of  seeing  New 

O 

York  follow  suit  ;  two  stinging  blows  to  the 
president  and  the  ex-president.  The  distress 
was  a  godsend  to  the  Whig  politicians.  They 
fairly  raved  in  their  anger  against  the  adminis 
tration,  and  denounced  all  its  acts,  good  and 


CHILDREN'S  TEETH  ARE  SET  ON  EDGE.  197 

bad  alike,  with  fluent  and  incoherent  impar 
tiality.  Indeed,  in  their  speeches,  and  in  the 
petitions  which  they  circulated  and  then  sent  to 
the  president,  they  used  language  that  was  to 
the  last  degree  absurd  in  its  violence  and  ex 
aggeration,  and  drew  descriptions  of  the  iniqui 
ties  of  the  rulers  of  the  country  which  were  so 
overwrought  as  to  be  merely  ridiculous.  The 
speeches  about  the  panic,  and  in  reference  to 
the  proposed  laws  to  alleviate  it,  were  remark 
able  for  their  inflation,  even  in  that  age  of  windy 
oratory. 

Van  Buren,  Benton,  and  their  associates  stood 
bravely  up  against  the  storm  of  indignation 
which  swept  over  the  whole  country,  and  lost 
neither  head  nor  nerve.  They  needed  both  to 
extricate  themselves  with  any  credit  from  the 
position  in  which  they  were  placed.  In  defer 
ence  to  the  urgent  wish  of  almost  all  the  people 
an  extra  session  of  Congress  was  called  especially 
to  deal  with  the  panic.  Van  Buren's  message  to 
this  body  was  a  really  statesmanlike  document, 
going  exhaustively  into  the  subject  of  the  na 
tional  finances.  The  Democrats  still  held  the 
majority  in  both  houses,  but  there  was  so  large 
a  floating  vote,  and  the  margins  were  so  nar 
row,  as  to  make  the  administration  feel  that  its 
hold  was  precarious. 

The  first  thing  to  be  done  was  to  provide  for 


198         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

the  immediate  wants  of  the  government,  which 
had  not  enough  money  to  pay  even  its  most 
necessary  running  expenses.  To  make  this 
temporary  provision  two  plans  were  proposed. 
The  fourth  instalment  of  the  surplus  —  ten 
millions  —  was  due  to  the  states.  As  there  was 
really  no  surplus,  but  a  deficit  instead,  it  was 
proposed  to  repeal  the  deposit  law  so  far  as  it 
affected  their  fourth  payment ;  and  treasury 
notes  were  to  be  issued  to  provide  for  immedi 
ate  and  pressing  needs. 

The  Whigs  frantically  attacked  the  presi 
dent's  proposals,  and  held  him  and  his  party 
accountable  for  all  the  evils  of  the  panic  ;  and 
in  truth  it  was  right  enough  to  hold  them  so  ac 
countable  for  part ;  but,  after  all,  the  harm  was 
largely  due  to  causes  existing  throughout  the 
civilized  world,  and  especially  to  the  specula 
tive  folly  rife  among  the  whole  American  peo 
ple.  But  it  is  always  an  easy  and  a  comfort 
able  thing  to  hold  others  responsible  for  what 
is  primarily  our  own  fault. 

Benton  did  not  believe,  as  a  matter  of  prin 
ciple,  in  the  issue  of  treasury  notes,  but  sup 
ported  the  bill  for  that  purpose  on  account  of 
the  sore  straits  the  administration  was  in,  and 
its  dire  need  of  assistance  from  any  source.  He 
treated  it  as  a  disagreeable  but  temporary 
makeshift,  only  allowable  on  the  ground  of  the 


CHILDREN'S  TEETH  ARE  SET  ON  EDGE.  199 

sternest  and  most  grinding  necessity,  He  stated 
that  he  supported  the  issue  only  because  the; 
treasury  notes  were  made  out  in  such  a  form 
that  they  could  not  become  currency ;  they 
were  merely  loan  notes.  Their  chief  character 
istic  was  that  they  bore  interest ;  they  were 
transferable  only  by  indorsement ;  were  paya 
ble  at  a  fixed  time ;  were  not  reissuable,  nor  of 
small  denominations  ;  and  were  to  be  canceled 
when  paid.  Such  being  the  case  he  favored 
their  issue,  but  expressly  stated  that  he  only 
did  so  on  account  of  the  urgency  of  the  govern 
mental  wants;  and  that  he  disapproved  of  any 
such  issue  until  the  ordinary  resources  of  taxes 
and  loans  had  been  tried  to  the  utmost  and 
failed.  "  I  distrust,  dislike,  and  would  fain  es 
chew  this  treasury-note  resource ;  I  prefer  the 
direct  loans  of  1820-21.  I  could  only  bring 
myself  to  support  this  present  measure  when  it 
was  urged  that  there  was  not  time  to  carry  a 
loan  through  in  its  forms  ;  nor  even  then  would 
I  consent  to  it  until  every  feature  of  a  currency 
character  had  been  eradicated  from  the  bill." 

A  sharp  struggle  took  place  over  the  bill 
brought  in  by  the  friends  of  the  administration 
and  advocated  by  Benton,  to  repeal  the  obliga 
tion  to  deposit  the  fourth  instalment  of  the  sur 
plus  with  the  states.  This  scheme  of  a  distribu 
tion,  thinly  disguised  under  the  name  of  deposit 


200        THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

to  soothe  the  feelings  of  Calhoun  find  the  other 
strict  constructionist  pundits,  had  worked  noth 
ing  but  mischief  from  the  start ;  and  now  that 
there  was  no  surplus  to  distribute,  it  would  seem 
incredible  that  there  should  have  been  opposi 
tion  to  its  partial  repeal.  Yet  Webster,  Clay, 
and  their  followers  strenuously  opposed  everi 
such  repeal.  It  is  possible  that  their  motives 
were  honest,  but  much  more  probable  that  they 
were  actuated  by  partisan  hostility  to  the  ad 
ministration,  or  that  they  believed  they  would 
increase  their  own  popularity  by  favoring  a  plan 
that  seemingly  distributed  money  as  a  gift 
among  the  states.  The  ..bill  was  finally  amended 
so  as  to  make  it  imperative  to  pay  this  fourth 
instalment  in  a  couple  of  years  ;  yet  it  was  not 
then  paid,  since  on  the  date  appointed  the  na 
tional  treasury  was  bankrupt  and  the  states  could 
therefore  never  get  the  money, —  which  was  the 
only  satisfactory  incident  in  the  whole  proceed 
ing.  The  financial  theories  of  Jackson  and 
Benton  were  crude  and  vicious,  it  is  true,  but 
Webster,  Clay,  and  most  other  public  men  of 
the  day  seem  to  have  held  ideas  on  the  subject 
that  were  almost,  if  not  quite,  as  mischievous. 

The  great  financial  measures  advocated  by  the 
administration  of  Van  Buren,  and  championed 
with  especial  zeal  by  Benton,  were  those  pro 
viding  for  an  independent  treasury  and  for 


CHILDREN'S  TEETH  ARE  SET  ON  EDGE.  201 

hard-money  payments  ;  that  is,  providing  that 
the  government  should  receive  nothing  but  gold 
and  silver  for  its  revenues,  and  that  this  gold 
and  silver  should  be  kept  by  its  own  officers  in 
real,  not  constructive,  treasuries,  —  in  strong 
buildings,  with  special  officers  to  hold  the  keys. 
The  treasury  was  to  be  at  Washington,  with 
branches  or  sub-treasuries  at  the  principal  points 
of  collection  and  disbursement,  c/' 

These  measures,  if  successful,  meant  that 
there  would  be  a  total  separation  of  the  federal 
government  from  all  banks ;  in  the  political 
language  of  the  times  they  became  known  as 
those  for  the  divorce  of  bank  and  state.  Hith 
erto  the  local  banks  chosen  by  Jackson  to  re 
ceive  the  deposits  had  been  actively  hostile  to 
Biddlc's  great  bank  and  to  its  friends  ;  but  self- 
interest  now  united  them  all  in  violent  opposi 
tion  to  the  new  scheme.  Webster,  Clay,  and  the 
Whigs  generally  fought  it  bitterly  in  the  Sen 
ate  ;  but  Calhoun  now  left  his  recent  allies  and 
joined  with  Benton  in  securing  its  passage. 
However,  it  was  for  the  time  being  defeated  in 
the  House  of  Representatives.  Most  of  the  op 
position  to  it  was  characterized  by  sheer  loud 
mouthed  demagogy  —  cries  that  the  govern 
ment  was  too  aristocratic  to  accept  the  money 
that  was  thought  good  enough  for  the  people, 
and  similar  claptrap.  Benton  made  a  very 


202         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

earnest  plea  for  hard  money,  and  especially  de 
nounced  the  doctrine  that  it  was  the  govern 
ment's  duty  to  interfere  in  any  way  in  private 
business  ;  for,  as  usual  in  times  of  general  dis 
tress,  a  good  many  people  had  a  vague  idea  that 
in  some  way  the  government  ought  to  step  in 
and  relieve  them  from  the  consequences  of  their 
own  folly. 

Meanwhile  the  banks  had  been  endeavoring 
to  resume  specie  pa}7 men t.  Those  of  New  York 
had  taken  steps  in  that  direction  but  little  more 
than  three  months  after  the  suspension.  Their 
weaker  Western  neighbors,  however,  were  not 
yet  in  condition  to  follow  suit ;  and  the  great 
bank  at  Philadelphia  also  at  first  refused  to 
come  in  with  them.  But  the  New  York  banks 
persisted  in  their  purpose,  resumed  payment  a 
year  after  they  had  suspended,  and  eventually 
the  others  had  to  fall  into  line;  the  reluctance 
to  do  so  being  of  course  attributed  by  Benton 
to  "  the  factious  and  wicked  machinations  "  of 
a  "  powerful  combined  political  and  moneyed 
confederation  "  —  a  shadowy  and  spectral  crea 
tion  of  vivid  Jacksonian  imaginations,  in  the 
existence  of  which  he  persisted  in  believing. 

Clay,  always  active  as  the  friend  of  the  banks, 
introduced  a  resolution,  nominally  to  quicken 
the  approach  of  resumption,  but  really  to  help 
out  precisely  those  weak  banks  wrhich  did  not 


CHILDREN'S   TEETH  ARE  SET   ON  EDGE.    208 

deserve  help,  making  the  notes  of  the  resuming 
banks  receivable  in  payment  of  all  dues  to  the 
federal  government.  This  was  offered  after 
the  banks  of  New  York  had  resumed,  and  when 
all  the  other  solvent  banks  were  on  the  point 
of  resuming  also;  so  its  nominal  purpose  was 
already  accomplished,  as  Benton,  in  a  caustic 
speech,  pointed  out.  He  then  tore  the  resolu 
tion  to  shreds,  showing  that  it  would  be  of  espe 
cial  benefit  to  the  insolvent  and  unsound  banks, 
and  would  insure  a  repetition  of  the  worst  evils 
under  which  the  country  was  already  suffering. 
He  made  it  clear  that  the  proposition  practically 
was  to  force  the  government  to  receive  paper 
promises  to  pay  from  banks  that  were  certain 
to  fail,  and  therefore  to  force  the  government: 
in  turn  to  pay  out  this  worthless  paper  to  its 
honest  creditors.  Benton's  speech  was  an  ex 
cellent  one,  and  Clay's  resolution  was  defeated. 
All  through  this  bank  controversy,  and  the 
other  controversies  relating  to  it,  Benton  took 
the  leading  part,  as  mouthpiece  of  the  admin 
istration.  He  heartily  supported  the  sugges 
tion  of  the  president,  that  a  stringent  bankrupt 
law  against  the  banks  should  be  passed.  Web 
ster  stood  out  as  the  principal  opponent  of  this 
measure,  basing  his  objections  mainly  upon  con 
stitutional  grounds ;  that  is,  questioning  the 
right,  rather  than  the  expediency,  of  the  pro- 


204  THOMAS  HART  BENT  ON. 

posed  remedy.  Benton  answered  him  at  length 
in  a  speech  showing  an  immense  amount  of  care 
ful  and  painstaking  study  and  a  wide  range  of 
historical  reading  and  legal  knowledge ;  he  re 
plied  point  by  point,  and  more  than  held  his 
own  with  his  great  antagonist.  His  speech  was 
an  exhaustive  study  of  the  history  and  scope 
of  bankruptcy  laws  against  corporations.  Ben- 
ton's  capacity  for  work  was  at  all  times  im 
mense  ;  he  delighted  in  it  for  its  own  sake,  and 
took  a  most  justifiable  pride  in  his  wide  reading, 
and  especially  in  his  full  acquaintance  with  his 
tory,  both  ancient  and  modern.  He  was  very 
fond  of  illustrating  his  speeches  on  American 
affairs  with  continual  allusions  and  references 
to  events  in  foreign  countries  or  in  old  times, 
which  he  considered  to  be  more  or  less  parallel 
to  those  he  was  discussing ;  and  indeed  he  often 
dragged  in  these  comparisons  when  there  was 
no  particular  need  for  such  a  display  of  his 
knowledge.  He  could  fairly  be  called  a  learned 
man,  for  he  had  studied  very  many  subjects 
deeply  and  thoroughly  ;  and  though  he  was  too 
self-conscious  and  pompous  in  his  utterances 
not  to  incur  more  than  the  suspicion  of  pedan 
try,  yet  the  fact  remains  that  hardly  any  other 
man  has  ever  sat  in  the  Senate  whose  range  of 
information  was  as  wide  as  his. 

He   made   another   powerful    and    carefully 


CHILDREN'S   TEETH  ARE  SET  ON  EDGE.    205 

wrought  speech  in  favor  of  what  lie  called  the 
act  to  provide  for  the  divorce  of  bank  and 
state.  This  bill,  as  finally  drawn,  consisted  of 
two  distinct  parts,  one  portion  making  provision 
for  the  keeping  of  the  public  moneys  in  an  inde 
pendent  treasury,  and  the  other  for  the  hard- 
money  currency,  which  was  all  that  the  govern 
ment  was  to  accept  in  payment  of  revenue  dues* 
This  last  provision,  however,  was  struck  out,  and 
the  bill  thereby  lost  the  support  of  Calhoun, 
who,  with  Webster,  Clay,  and  the  other  Whigs, 
voted  against  it ;  but,  mainly  through  Benton's 
efforts,  it  passed  the  Senate,  although  by  a  very 
slender  majority.  Ben  ton,  in  his  speech,  dwelt 
with  especial  admiration  on  the  working  of  the 
monetary  system  of  France,  and  held  it  up  as 
well  worthy  to  be  copied  by  us.  Most  of  the 
points  he  made  were  certainly  good  ones,  al 
though  he  overestimated  the  beneficent  results 
that  would  spring  from  the  adoption  of  the  pro 
posed  system,  believing  that  it  would  put  an 
end  for  the  future  to  all  panics  and  commercial 
convulsions.  In  reality  it  would  have  removed 
only  one  of  the  many  causes  which  go  to  pro 
duce  the  latter,  leaving  the  others  free  to  work 
as  before  ;  the  people  at  large,  not  the  govern 
ment,  were  mainly  to  blame,  and  even  with 
them  it  was  in  some  respects  their  misfortune 
as  much  as  their  fault.  Benton's  error,  how- 


206        THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

ever,  was  natural ;  like  most  other  men  he  was 
unable  fully  to  realize  that  hardly  any  phenom 
enon,  even  the  most  simple,  can  be  said  to  spring 
from  one  cause  only,  and  not  from  a  complex 
and  interwoven  tissue  of  causation  —  and  a 
panic  is  one  of  the  least  simple  and  most  com 
plex  of  mercantile  phenomena.  BentoiTs  deep- 
rooted  distrust  of  and  hostility  to  such  banking 
as  then  existed  in  the  United  States  certainly 
had  good  grounds  for  existence. 

This  distrust  was  shown  again  when  the  bill 
for  the  re-charter  of  the  district  banks  came  up. 
The  specie  basis  of  many  of  them  had  been  al 
lowed  to  become  altogether  too  low  ;  and  Ben- 
ton  showed  himself  more  keenly  alive  than  any 
other  public  man  to  the  danger  of  such  a  state 
of  things,  and  argued  strongly  that  a  basis  of 
specie  amounting  to  one  third  the  total  of  lia 
bilities  was  the  only  safe  proportion,  and  should 
be  enforced  by  law.  He  made  a  most  forcible 
argument,  using  numerous  and  apt  illustrations 
to  show  the  need  of  his  amendment. 

Nor  was  the  tireless  Missouri  senator  satisfied 
even  yet ;  for  he  introduced  a  resolution  asking 
leave  to  bring  in  a  bill  to  tax  the  circulation  of 
banks  and  bankers,  and  of  all  corporations,  com 
panies,  or  individuals,  issuing  paper  currency. 
One  object  of  the  bill  was  to  raise  revenue ; 
but  even  more  he  aimed  at  the  regulation  of  the 


CHILDREN'S  TEETH  ARE  SET  ON  EDGE.  207 

currency  by  the  suppression  of  small  notes  ;  and 
for  this  end  the  tax  was  proposed  to  be  made 
heaviest  on  notes  under  twenty  dollars,  and  to  be 
annually  augmented  until  it  had  accomplished 
its  object  and  they  had  been  driven  out  of  cir 
culation.  In  advocating  his  measure  he  used, 
as  was  perhaps  unavoidable,  some  arguments 
that  savored  strongly  of  demagogy ;  but  on  the 
whole  he  made  a  strong  appeal,  using  as  prece 
dents  for  the  law  he  wished  to  see  enacted  both 
the  then  existing  banking  laws  in  England  and 
those  that  had  obtained  previously  in  the  his 
tory  of  the  United  States. 

Taken  altogether,  while  the  Jacksonians, 
during  the  period  of  Van  Buren's  presidency, 
rightly  suffered  for  their  previous  financial  mis 
deeds,  yet  so  far  as  their  actions  at  the  time  were 
concerned,  they  showed  to  greater  advantage 
than  the  Whigs.  Nor  did  they  waver  in  their 
purpose  even  when  the  tide  of  popular  feeling 
changed.  The  great  financial  measure  of  the 
administration,  in  which  Benton  was  most  in 
terested,  the  independent  treasury  bill,  he  suc 
ceeded  in  getting  through  the  Senate  twice ;  the 
first  time  it  was  lost  in  the  House  of  Represen 
tatives  ;  but  on  the  second  occasion,  towards 
the  close  of  Van  Buren's  term,  firmness  and  per 
severance  met  their  reward.  The  bill  passed 
the  Senate  by  an  increased  majority,  scraped 


208        THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

through  the  House  after  a  bitter  contest,  and 
became  a  law.  It  developed  the  system  known 
as  that  of  the  Sub-Treasury,  which  has  proved 
satisfactory  to  the  present  day. 

It  was  during  Van  Bureivs  term  that  Riddle's 
great  bank,  so  long  the  pivot  on  which  turned 
the  fortunes  of  political  parties,  finally  tottered 
to  its  fall.  It  was  ruined  by  unwise  and  reck 
less  management;  and  Benton  sang  a  pecan  over 
its  downfall,  exulting  in  its  fate  as  a  justification 
of  all  that  he  had  said  and  done.  Yet  there  can 
be  little  doubt  that  its  mismanagement  became 
gross  only  after  all  connection  with  the  national 
government  had  ceased ;  and  its  end,  attributa 
ble  to  causes  not  originally  existent  or  likely  to 
exist,  can  hardly  be  rightly  considered  in  pass 
ing  judgment  upon  the  actions  of  the  Jackso- 
nians  in  reference  to  it. 


CHAPTER   X. 

LAST  DAYS  OF  THE  JACKSONIAN   DEMOCRACY, 

THE  difficulty  and  duration  of  a  war  with  an 
Indian  tribe  depend  less  upon  the  numbers  of 
the  tribe  itself  than  upon  the  nature  of  the 
ground  it  inhabits.  The  two  Indian  tribes  that 
have  caused  the  most  irritating  and  prolonged 
struggle  are  the  Apaches,  who  live  in  the  vast, 
waterless,  mountainous  deserts  of  Arizona  and 
New  Mexico,  and  whom  we  are  at  this  present 
moment  engaged  in  subduing,  and  the  Semi- 
noles,  who,  from  among  the  impenetrable 
swamps  of  Florida,  bade  the  whole  United 
States  army  defiance  for  seven  long  years  ;  and 
this  although  neither  Seminoles  nor  Apaches 
ever  brought  much  force  into  the  field,  nor  in 
flicted  such  defeats  upon  us  as  have  other  Indian 
tribes,  like  the  Creeks  and  Sioux. 

The  conflict  with  the  Seminoles  was  one  of 
the  legacies  left  by  Jackson  to  Van  Buren ;  it 
lasted  as  long  as  the  Revolutionary  War,  cost 
thirty  millions  of  dollars,  and  baffled  the  efforts 
of  several  generals  and  numerous  troops,  who 

14 


210  THOMAS  HART  BENT  ON. 

had  previously  shown  themselves  equal  to  any 
in  the  world.  The  expense,  length,  and  ill-suc 
cess  of  the  struggle,  and  a  strong  feeling  that 
the  Seminoles  had  been  wronged,  made  it  a 
great  bandle  for  attack  on  the  administration ; 
and  the  defense  was  taken  up  by  Beiiton,  who 
always  accepted  completely  the  Western  esti 
mate  of  any  form  of  the  Indian  question. 

As  is  usually  the  case  in  Indian  wars  there 
had  been  much  wrong  done  by  each  side  ;  but 
in  this  instance  we  were  the  more  to  blame,  al 
though  the  Indians  themselves  were  far  from 

o 

being  merely  harmless  and  suffering  innocents. 
The  Seminoles  were  being  deprived  of  their 
lands  in  pursuance  of  the  general  policy  of  re 
moving  all  the  Indians  west  of  the  Mississippi. 
They  had  agreed  to  go,  under  pressure,  and  in 
fluenced,  probably,  by  fraudulent  representa 
tions  ;  but  they  declined  to  fulfill  their  agree 
ment.  If  they  had  been  treated  wisely  and 
firmly  they  might  probably  have  been  allowed 
to  remain  without  serious  injury  to  the  sur 
rounding  whites.  But  no  such  treatment  was 
attempted,  and  as  a  result  we  were  plunged  in 
one  of  the  most  harassing  Indian  wars  we  ever 
waged.  In  their  gloomy,  tangled  swamps,  and 
among  the  unknown  and  untrodden  recesses  of 
the  everglades  the  Indians  found  a  secure  asy 
lum  ;  and  they  issued  from  their  haunts  to  burn 


LAST  DAYS   OF  JACK  SON  IAN  DEMOCRACY.    211 

and  ravage  almost  all  the  settled  part  of  Florida, 
fairly  depopulating  five  counties  ;  while  the  sol 
diers  could  rarely  overtake  them,  and  when  they 
did,  were  placed  at  such  a  disadvantage  that  the 
Indians  repulsed  or  cut  off  detachment  after 
detachment,  generally  making  a  merciless  and 
complete  slaughter  of  each.  The  great  Semi- 
nole  leader,  Osceola,  was  captured  only  by  de 
liberate  treachery  and  breach  of  faith  on  our 
part,  and  the  Indians  were  worn  out  rather  than 
conquered.  This  was  partly  owing  to  their  re 
markable  capacities  as  bush-fighters,  but  infi 
nitely  more  to  the  nature  of  their  territory. 

Our  troops  generally  fought  with  great 
bravery;  but  there  is  very  little  else  in  the 
struggle,  either  as  regards  its  origin  or  the 
manner  in  which  it  was  carried  on,  to  which  an 
American  can  look  back  with  any  satisfaction. 
We  usually  group  all  our  Indian  wars  together, 
in  speaking  of  their  justice  or  injustice  ;  and 
thereby  show  flagrant  ignorance.  The  Sioux 
and  Cheyennes,  for  instance,  have  more  often 
been  sinning  than  sinned  against ;  for  example, 
the  so-called  Chivington  or  Sandy  Creek  Mas 
sacre,  in  spite  of  certain  most  objectionable  de 
tails,  was  on  the  whole  as  righteous  and  benefi 
cial  a  deed  as  ever  took  place  on  the  frontier. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  most  cruel  wrongs 
have  been  perpetrated  by  whites  upon  perfectly 


212  THOMAS  HART  BEN  TON. 

peaceable  and  unoffending  tribes  like  those  of 
California,  or  the  Nez  Perc.es.  Yet  the  emascu 
lated  professional  humanitarians  mourn  as  much 
over  one  set  of  Indians  as  over  the  other  —  and 
indeed,  on  all  points  connected  with  Indian 
management,  are  as  untrustworthy  and  unsafe 
leaders  as  would  be  an  equal  number  of  the 
most  brutal  white  borderers.  But  the  Semi- 
nole  War  was  one  of  those  where  the  Eastern, 
or  humanitarian  view  was  more  nearly  correct 
than  was  any  other ;  although  even  here  the 
case  was  far  from  being  entirely  one-sided. 

Benton  made  an  elaborate  but  not  always 
candid  defense  of  the  administration,  both  as  to 
the  origin  and  as  to  the  prosecution  of  the  war. 
He  attempted  to  show  that  the  Seminoles  had 
agreed  to  go  West,  had  broken  their  treaty 
without  any  reason,  had  perpetrated  causeless 
massacres,  had  followed  up  their  successes  with 
merciless  butcheries,  which  last  statement  was 
true ;  and  that  Osceola  had  forfeited  all  claim 
or  right  to  have  a  flag  of  truce  protect  him. 
There  was  a  certain  justice  in  his  position  even 
on  these  questions,  and  when  he  came  to  defend 
the  conduct  of  our  soldiers  he  had  the  right  en 
tirely  with  him.  They  were  led  by  the  same 
commander,  and  belonged  to  the  same  regi- 
axents,  that  in  Canada  had  shown  themselves 
equal  to  the  famous  British  infantry ;  they  had 


LAST  DAYS   OF* JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY.    213 

to  contend  with  the  couwtry,  rather  than  with 
their  enemies,  as  the  sweltering  heat,  the  stag 
nant  lagoons,  the  quaking  morasses,  and  the 
dense  forests  of  Florida  made  it  almost  impos 
sible  for  an  army  to  carry  on  a  successful  cam 
paign.  Moreover,  the  Seminoles  were  well 
armed  ;  and  many  tribes  of  North  American 
Indians  show  themselves,  when  with  good  weap 
ons  and  on  their  own  ground,  more  dangerous 
antagonists  than  would  be  an  equal  number  of 
the  best  European  troops.  Indeed,  under  such 
conditions  they  can  only  be  contended  with  on 
equal  terms  if  the  opposing  white  force  is  made 
up  of  frontiersmen  who  are  as  good  woodsmen 
and  riflemen  as  themselves,  and  who,  moreover, 
have  been  drilled  by  some  man  like  Jackson, 
who  knows  how  to  handle  them  to  the  best  ad 
vantage,  both  in  disciplining  their  lawless  cour 
age  and  in  forcing  them  to  act  under  orders 
and  together,  —  the  lack  of  which  discipline  and 
power  of  supporting  each  other  has  often  ren 
dered  an  assemblage  of  formidable  individual 
border  -  fighters  a  mere  disorderly  mob  when 
brought  into  the  field. 

The  war  dragged  on  tediously.  The  troops  — 
regulars,  volunteers,  and  militia  alike  —  fought 
the  Indians  again  and  again  ;  there  were  pitched 
battles,  surprises,  ambuscades,  and  assaults  on 
places  of  unknown  strength;  hundreds  of  sol- 


214         THOMAS  HART  BEATON. 

diers  were  slain  in  ^battle  or  by  treachery ; 
hundreds  of  settlers  were  slaughtered  in  their 
homes,  or  as  they  fled  from  them  ;  the  bloody 
Indian  forays  reached  even  to  the  outskirts  of 
Tallahatchee  and  to  within  sight  of  the  walls  of 
quaint  old  St.  Augustine.  Little  by  little,  how 
ever,  the  power  of  the  Seminoles  was  broken  ; 
their  war  bands  were  scattered  and  driven  from 
the  field,  hundreds  of  their  number  were  slain 
in  fight,  and  five  times  as  many  surrendered 
and  were  taken  west  of  the  Mississippi.  The 
white  troops  marched  through  Florida  down  to 
and  into  the  everglades,  and  crossed  it  back 
wards  and  forwards,  from  the  Gulf  of  Mexico 
to  the  Atlantic  Ocean  ;  they  hunted  their  foes 
from  morass  to  morass  and  from  hummock  to 
hummock  ;  they  mapped  out  the  whole  hitherto 
unknown  country;  they  established  numerous 
posts  ;  opened  hundreds  of  miles  of  wngon  road; 
and  built  very  many  causeways  and  bridges. 
But  they  could  not  end  the  war.  The  bands  of 
Indians  broke  up  and  entirely  ceased  to  offer 
resistance  to  bodies  of  armed  whites ;  but  as 
individuals  they  continued  as  dangerous  to  the 
settlers  as  ever,  prowling  out  at  night  like  wild 
beasts  from  their  fastnesses  in  the  dark  and 
fetid  swamps,  murdering,  burning,  and  ravag 
ing  in  all  the  outlying  settlements,  and  destroy. 
ing  every  lonely  farm-house  or  homestead. 


LAST  DAYS   OF  JACKSON/AN  DEMOCRACY.     215 

There  was  but  one  way  in  which  the  war 
could  be  finally  ended,  and  that  was  to  have 
the  territory  occupied  by  armed  settlers  ;  in 
other  words,  to  have  it  won  and  held  exactly 
as  almost  all  the  land  of  the  United  States  has 
been  in  the  beginning.  Benton  introduced  a 
bill  to  bring  this  about,  giving  to  every  such 
settler  a  good  inheritance  in  the  soil  as  a  reward 
for  his  enterprise,  toil,  and  danger  :  and  the 
war  was  finished  only  by  the  adoption  of  this 
method.  He  supported  his  bill  in  a  very  effec 
tive  speech,  showing  that  the  proposed  way  was 
the  only  one  by  which  a  permanent  conquest 
could  be  effected ;  he  himself  had,  when  young, 
seen  it  put  into  execution  in  Tennessee  and 
Kentucky,  where  the  armed  settlers,  with  their 
homesteads  in  the  soil,  formed  the  vanguard  of 
the  white  advance :  where  the  rifle  -  bearing 
backwoodsmen  went  forth  to  fight  and  to  culti 
vate,  living  in  assemblages  of  block-houses  at 
first  and  separating  into  individual  settlements 
afterwards.  The  work  had  to  be  done  with  axe, 
spade,  and  rifle  alike.  Benton  rightly  insisted 
that  there  was  no  longer  need  of  a  large  army 
in  Florida :  — 

Why,  the  men  who  are  there  now  can  find  nobody 
to  fight !  It  is  two  years  since  a  fight  has  been  had. 
Ten  men  who  will  avoid  surprises  and  ambuscades  can 
now  go  from  one  end  of  Florida  to  the  other.  As 


216         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

warriors,  these  Indians  no  longer  appear ;  it  is  only 
as  assassins,  as  robbers,  as  incendiaries,  that  they  lurk 
about.  What  is  now  wanted  is  not  an  army  to  fight, 
but  settlers  and  cultivators  to  take  possession  and 
keep  possession ;  and  the  armed  cultivator  is  the  man 
for  that.  The  block-house  is  the  first  house  to  be 
built  in  an  Indian  country  ;  the  stockade  the  first 
fence  to  be  put  up.  Within  that  block -house,  or 
within  a  hollow  square  of  block-houses,  two  miles 
long  on  each  side,  two  hundred  yards  apart,  and  in 
closing  a  good  field,  safe  habitations  are  to  be  found 
for  families.  Cultivation  and  defense  then  go  hand  in 
hand.  The  heart  of  the  Indian  sickens  when  he  hears 
the  crowing  of  the  cock,  the  barking  of  the  dog,  the 
sound  of  the  axe,  and  the  crack  of  the  rifle.  These 
are  the  true  evidences  of  the  dominion  of  the  white 
man  ;  these  are  the  proofs  that  the  owner  has  come 
and  means  to  stay,  and  then  the  Indians  feel  it  to  be 
time  for  them  to  go.  While  soldiers  alone  are  in 
the  country  they  feel  their  presence  to  be  temporary  ; 
that  they  are  mere  sojourners  in  the  land,  and  sooner 
or  later  must  go  away.  It  is  the  settler  alone,  the 
armed  settler,  whose  presence  announces  the  domin 
ion,  the  permanent  dominion,  of  the  white  man. 

Benton's  ideas  were  right,  and  were  acted 
upon.  It  is  impossible  even  to  subdue  an 
Indian  tribe  by  the  army  alone  ;  the  latter  can 
only  pave  the  way  for  and  partially  protect 
the  armed  settlers  who  are  to  hold  the  soil. 

Benton  continued  to  take  a  great  interest  in 


LAST  DAYS   OF  JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY.     217 

the  disposal  of  the  public  lands,  as  was  natural 
in  a  senator  from  the  West,  where  the  bulk  of 
these  lands  lay.  He  was  always  a  great  advo 
cate  of  a  homestead  law.  During  Van  Buren's 
administration,  he  succeeded  in  getting  two  or 
three  bills  on  the  subject  through  the  Senate. 
One  of  these  allowed  lands  that  had  been  five 
years  in  the  market  to  be  reduced  in  price  to  a 
dollar  an  acre,  and  if  they  stood  five  years  longer 
to  go  down  to  seventy-five  cents.  The  bill  was 
greatly  to  the  interest  of  the  Western  farmer  in 
the  newer,  although  not  necessarily  the  newest, 
parts  of  the  country.  The  man  who  went  on 
the  newest  land  was  in  turn  provided  for  by  the 
preemption  bill,  which  secured  the  privilege  of 
first  purchase  to  the  actual  settler  on  any  lands 
to  which  the  Indian  title  had  been  extinguished  ; 
to  be  paid  "for  at  the  minimum  price  of  public 
lands  at  the  time.  An  effort  was  made  to  con 
fine  the  benefits  of  this  proposed  law  to  citi 
zens  of  the  United  States,  excluding  unnatu- 
ralized  foreigners  from  its  action.  Benton,  as 
representing  the  new  states,  who  desired  immi 
grants  of  every  kind,  whether  foreign  or  native, 
successfully  opposed  this.  He  pointed  out  that 
there  was  no  question  of  conferring  political 
rights,  which  involved  the  management  of  the 
government,  and  which  should  not  be  conferred 
until  the  foreigner  had  become  a  naturalized 


218         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

citizen  ;  it  was  merely  a  question  of  allowing  the 
alien  a  right  to  maintain  himself  and  to  support 
his  family.  Pie  especially  opposed  the  amend 
ment  on  account  of  the  class  of  foreigners  it 
would  affect.  Aliens  who  wished  to  take  up 
public  lands  were  not  paupers  or  criminals,  and 
did  not  belong  to  the  shiftless  and  squalid  for 
eign  mob  that  drifted  into  the  great  cities  of  the 
seaboard  and  the  interior ;  but  on  the  contrary 
were  among  our  most  enterprising,  hardy,  and 
thrifty  citizens,  who  had  struck  out  for  them 
selves  into  the  remote  parts  of  the  new  states 
and  had  there  begun  to  bring  the  wilderness 
into  subjection.  Such  men  deserved  to  be  en 
couraged  in  every  way,  and  should  receive  from 
the  preemption  laws  the  same  benefits  that 
would  enure  to  native-born  citizens.  The  third 
bill  introduced,  which  passed  the  Senate  but 
failed  in  the  House,  was  one  to  permit  the  pub 
lic  lands  sold  to  be  immediately  taxed  by  the 
states  in  which  they  lay.  Originally  these  lands 
had  been  sold  upon  credit,  the  total  amount  not 
being  paid,  nor  the  title  passed,  until  five  years 
after  the  sale  ;  and  during  this  time  it  would 
have  been  unjust  to  tax  them,  as  failure  in  pay 
ing  "the  installments  to  the  government  would 
have  let  the  lands  revert  to  the  latter ;  but 
when  the  cash  system  was  substituted  for  credit 
Benton  believed  that  there  was  no  longer  reason 


LAST  DAYS   OF  JACKSON  I  AN  DEMOCRACY.     219 

why  the  new  lands  should  not  bear  their  share 
of  the  state  burdens. 

Daring  Van  Buren's  administration  the  stand 
ard  of  public  honesty,  which  had  been  lowering 
with  frightful  rapidity  ever  since,  with  Adams, 
the  men  of  high  moral  tone  had  crone  out  of 

O  O 

power,  went  almost  as  far  down  as  it  could  go  ; 
although  things  certainly  did  not  change  for  the 
better  under  Tyler  and   Polk.     Not   only  was 
there  the  most  impudent  and  unblushing  rascal 
ity  among  the  public  servants  of  the  nation,  but 
the  people  themselves,  through  their  representa- " 
tives  in  the  state  legislatures,  went  to  work  to 
swindle   their  honest  creditors.     Many  states, 
in  the  rage  for  public  improvements,  had  con 
tracted  debts  which  they  now  refused   to  pay  ; 
in  many  cases  they  were  unable,  or  at  least  so 
professed  themselves,  even  to   pay  the   annual 
interest.     The  debts  of  the  states  were  largely 
held   abroad ;    they   had   been    converted   into 
stock  and  held  in  shares,  which  had  gone  into 
a  great  number  of  hands,  and  now,  of  course, 
became  greatly  depreciated  in  value.     It  is  a 
painful  and  shameful  page  in  our  history  ;  and 
every  man  connected  with  the  repudiation  of 
the  states'  debts  ought,  if  remembered  at  all,  to 
be  remembered  only  with  scorn  and  contempt. 
However,  time  lias  gradually  shrouded  from  our 
sight  both  the  names  of  the  leaders  in  the  re- 


220  THOMAS  HART  BEN  TON. 

pudiation  and  the  names  of  the  victims  whom 
they  swindled.  Two  alone,  one  in  each  class, 
will  always  be  kept  in  mind.  Before  Jefferson 
Davis  took  his  place  among  the  arch-traitors  in 
our  annals  he  had  already  long  been  known  as 
one  of  the  chief  repndiators  ;  it  was  not  unnat 
ural  that  to  dishonesty  towards  the  creditors  of 
the  public  he  should  afterwards  add  treachery 
towards  the  public  itself.  The  one  most  pro 
minent  victim  was  described  by  Benton  himself: 
"The  Reverend  Sydney  Smith,  of  witty  memory, 
but  amiable  withal,  was  accustomed  to  lose  all 
his  amiability,  but  no  part  of  his  wit,  when  he 
spoke  of  his  Pennsylvania  bonds  —  which,  in 
fact,  was  very  often." 

Many  of  the  bond-holders,  however,  did  not 
manifest  their  grief  by  caustic  wit,  but  looked 
to  more  substantial  relief  ;  and  did  their  best  to 
bring  about  the  assumption  of  the  state  debts, 
in  some  form,  whether  open  or  disguised,  by  tho 
federal  government.  The  British  capitalists 
united  with  many  American  capitalists  to  work 
for  some  such  action  ;  and  there  were  plenty  of 
people  in  the  states  willing  enough  to  see  it 
done.  Of  course  it  would  have  been  criminal 
folly  on  the  part  of  the  federal  government  to 
take  any  such  step  ;  and  Benton  determined  to 
meet  and  check  the  effort  at  the  very  beginning. 
The  London  Bankers'  Circular  had  contained 


LAST  DAYS   OF  JACK  SON  I  AN  DEMOCRACY.    221 

a  proposition  recommending  that  the  Congress 
of  the  United  States  should  guarantee,  or  other 
wise  provide  for,  the  ultimate  payment  of  the 
debts  which  the  states  had  contracted  for  state 
or  local  purposes.  Benton  introduced  a  series 
of  resolutions  declaring  utter  opposition  to  the 
proposal,  both  on  the  ground  of  expediency  and 
011  that  of  constitutionality.  The  resolutions 
were  perfectly  proper  in  their  purpose,  but  were 
disfigured  by  that  cheap  species  of  demagogy 
which  consists  in  denouncing  purely  suppositi 
tious  foreign  interference,  complicated  by  an 
allusion  to  Benton's  especial  pet  terror,  the  in 
evitable  money  power.  As  he  put.it:  "Foreign 
interference  and  influence  are  far  more  danger 
ous  in  the  invidious  intervention  of  the  mon 
eyed  power  than  in  the  forcible  invasions  of 
fleets  and  armies." 

An  attempt  was  made  directly  to  reverse  the 
effect  of  the  resolutions  by  amending  them  so  as 
to  provide  that  the  public  land  revenue  should 
be  divided  among  the  states,  to  help  them  in 
the  payment  of  these  debts.  Both  Webster  and 
Clay  supported  this  amendment,  but  it  was  for 
tunately  beaten  by  a  large  vote. 

Benton's  speech,  like  the  resolutions  in  sup 
port  of  which  he  spoke,  was  right  in  its  purpose, 
but  contained  much  matter  that  was  beside  the 
mark.  He  had  worked  himself  into  such  a  con- 


222  THOMAS   HART  BEN  TON. 

dition  over  the  supposititious  intrigues  of  the 
"  money  power  "  —  an  attack  on  which  is  al 
most  always  sure  to  be  popular  —  that  he  was 
very  certain  to  discover  evidence  of  their  exist 
ence  on  all,  even  the  most  unlikely,  occasions; 
and  it  is  difficult  to  think  that  he  was  not  him 
self  aware  how  overdrawn  was  his  prophecy  of 
the  probable  interference  of  foreign  powers  in 
our  affairs,  if  the  resolutions  he  had  presented 
were  not  adopted. 

The  tariff  had  once  more  begun  to  give 
trouble,  and  the  South  was  again  complaining 
of  its  workings,  aware  that  she  was  falling  al 
ways  more  to  the  rear  in  the  race  for  prosperity, 
and  blindly  attributing  her  failure  to  everything 
but  the  true  reason,  —  the  existence  of  slavery. 
Even  Benton  himself  showed  a  curiously  pa 
thetic  eagerness  to  prove  both  to  others  and  him 
self  that  the  cause  of  the  increasing  disparity  in 
growth,  and  incompatibility  in  interest  between 
the  two  sections,  must  be  due  to  some  tempo 
rary  and  artificial  cause,  and  endeavored  to  hide 
from  all  eyes,  even  from  his  own,  the  fact  that 
the  existence  of  slavery  was  working,  slowly 
but  surely,  and  with  steadily  increasing  rapid 
ity,  to  rend  in  sunder  the  Union  which  he  loved 
and  served  with  such  heartfelt  devotion.  He 
tried  to  prove  that  the  main  cause  of  discontent 
was  to  be  found  in  the  tariff  and  other  laws, 


LAST  DAYS   OF  JACK  SON  I  AN  DEMOCRACY.     223 

which  favored  the  North  at  the  expense  of  the 
South.  At  the  same  time  he  entered  an  elo 
quent  plea  for  a  warmer  feeling  between  the 
sections,  and  pointed  out  the  absolute  hopeless 
ness  of  attempting  to  better  the  situation,  in 
any  way  by  disunion.  The  great  Missourian 
could  look  back  with  fond  pride  and  regret  to 
the  condition  of  the  South  as  it  was  during  and 
immediately  after  the  colonial  days,  when  it 
was  the  seat  of  wealth,  power,  high  living,  and 
free-handed  hospitality,  and  was  filled  to  over 
flowing  with  the  abounding  life  of  its  eager  and 
turbulent  sons.  The  change  for  the  worse  in 
its  relative  condition  was  real  and  great.  He 
reproved  his  fellow-Southerners  for  attributing 
this  change  to  a  single  cause,  the  unequal  work 
ing  of  the  federal  government,  "  which  gave  all 
the  benefits  of  the  Union  to  the  South  and  all 
its  burdens  to  the  North  ;  "  he  claimed  that  it 
was  due  to  many  other  causes  as  well.  Yet 
those  whom  he  rebuked  were  as  near  right  as 
he  was  ;  for  the  change  was  due  in  the  main  to 
Only  one  cause  —  but  that  cause  was  slavery. 
It  is  almost  pitiful  to  see  the  strong,  stern,  self- 
reliant  statesman  refusing,  with  nervous  and 
passionate  willfulness,  to  look  the  danger  in 
the  face,  and,  instead  thereof,  trying  to  per 
suade  himself  into  the  belief  that  u  the  remedy 
lies  in  the  right  working  of  the  Constitution  ; 


224         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

in  the  cessation  of  unequal  legislation  ;  in  the 
redaction  of  the  inordinate  expenses  of  the  gov 
ernment  ;  in  its  return  to  the  simple,  limited, 
and  economical  machine  it  was  intended  to  be  ; 
and  in  the  revival  of  fraternal  feelings  and  re 
spect  for  each  other's  rights  and  just  com 
plaints."  Like  many  another  man  he  thought, 
or  tried  to  think,  that  by  sweeping  the  dust 
from  the  door-sill  he  could  somehow  stave  off 
the  whirling  rush  of  the  sand-storm. 

The  compromise  tariff  of  1833  had  abolished 
all  specific  duties,  establishing  ad  valorem  ones 
in  their  place  ;  and  the  result  had  been  great 
uncertainty  and  injustice  in  its  working.  Now 
whether  a  protective  tariff  is  right  or  wrong 
may  be  open  to  question  ;  but  if  it  exists  at 
all,  it  should  work  as  simply  and  with  as  much 
certainty  and  exactitude  as  possible;  if  its  in 
terpretation  varies,  or  if  it  is  continually  med 
dled  with  by  Congress,  great  damage  ensues. 
It  is  in  reality  of  far  less  importance  that  a  law 
should  be  ideally  right  than  that  it  should  be 
certain  and  steady  in  its  workings.  Even  sup 
posing  that  a  high  tariff  is  all  wrong,  it  would 
work  infinitely  better  for  the  country  than  would 
a  series  of  changes  between  high  and  low  duties. 
Benton  strongly  advocated  a  return  to  specific 
duties,  as  being  simpler,  surer,  and  better  on 
every  account.  In  commenting  on  the  ad  va- 


LAST  DAYS  OF  JACKSON  IAN  DEMOCRACY.     225 

lorem  duties,  lie  showed  how  they  had  been 
adopted  blindly  and  without  discussion  by  the 
frightened,  silent  multitude  of  congressmen  and 
senators,  who  jumped  at  Clay's  compromise  bill 
in  1833  as  giving  them  a  loop-hole  of  escape 
from  a  situation  where  they  would  have  had  to 
face  evil  consequences,  no  matter  what  stand 
they  took.  Benton's  comment  on  men  of  this 
stamp  deserves  chronicling,  from  its  justice  and 
biting  severity  :  "  It  (the  compromise  act)  was 
passed  by  the  aid  of  the  votes  of  those — always 
a  considerable  per  centum  in  every  public  body 
—  to  whom  the  name  of  compromise  is  an  irre 
sistible  attraction  ;  amiable  men,  who  would  do 
no  wrong  of  themselves,  and  without,  whom  the 
designing  could  also  do  but  little  wrong." 

He  not  only  devoted  himself  to  the  general 
subject  of  the  tariff  in  relation  to  specific  duties, 
but  he  also  took  up  several  prominent  abuses. 
One  subject,  on  which  he  was  never  tired  of 
harping  with  monotonous  persistency,  was  the 
duty  on  salt.  The  idea  of  making  salt  free  had 
become -one  which  he  was  almost  as  fond  of 
bringing  into  every  discussion,  no  matter  how 
inappropiate  to  the  matter  in  hand,  as  he  was 
of  making  irrelevant  and  abusive  allusions  to 
his  much  -  enduring  and  long-suffering  hobby, 
the  iniquitous  "money  power^"  Benton  had  all 
the  tenacity  of  a  snapping  turtle,  and  was  as 

15 


226  THOMAS  HART  BE  NT  ON. 

firm  a  believer  in  the  policy  of  "  continuous 
hammering  "  as  Grant  himself.  His  tenacity  and 
his  pertinacious  refusal  to  abandon  any  contest, 
no  matter  what  the  odds  were  against  him,  and 
no  matter  how  often  he  had  to  return  to  the 
charge,  formed  two  of  his  most  invaluable  qual 
ities,  and  when  called  into  play  on  behalf  of 
such  an  object  as  the  preservation  of  the  Union, 
cannot  receive  too  high  praise  at  our  hands ;  for 
they  did  the  country  services  so  great  and  last 
ing  that  they  should  never  be  forgotten.  It 
would  have  been  fortunate  indeed  if  Clay  and 
Webster  had  possessed  the  fearless,  aggressive 
courage  and  iron  will  of  the  rugged  Missourian, 
who  was  so  often  pitted  against  them  in  the 
political  arena.  But  when  Benton's  attention 
was  firmly  fixed  on  the  accomplishment  of  some 
thing  comparatively  trivial,  his  dogged,  stub 
born,  and  unyielding  earnestness  drew  him  into 
making  efforts  of  which  the  disproportion  to 
the  result  aimed  at  was  rather  droll.  Nothing 
could  thwart  him  or  turn  him  aside  ;  and  though 
slow  to  take  up  an  idea,  yet,  if  it  was 'once  in 
his  head,  to  drive  it  out  was  a  simply  hopeless 
task.  These  qualities  were  of  such  invaluable 
use  to  the  state  on  so  many  great  occasions  that 
we  can  well  afford  to  treat  them  merely  with  a 
good-humored  laugh,  when  we  see  them  exer 
cised  on  behalf  of  such  a  piece  of  foolishness 
as,  for  example,  the  expunging  resolution. 


LAST  DAYS   OF  JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY    227 

The  repeal  of  the  salt  tax,  then,  was  a  partic 
ular  favorite  in  Benton's  rather  numerous  stable 
of  hobbies,  because  it  gave  free  scope  for  the 
use  of  sentimental  as  well  as  of  economic  argu 
ments.  He  had  the  right  of  the  question,  and 
was  not  in  the  least  daunted  by  his  numerous 
rebuffs  and  the  unvarying  ill  success  of  his  ef 
forts.  Speaking  in  1840,  he  stated  that  he  had 
been  urging  the  repeal  for  twelve  years ;  and 
for  the  purpose  of  furnishing  data  with  which 
to  compare  such  a  period  of  time,  and  without 
the  least  suspicion  that  there  was  anything  out 
of  the  way  in  the  comparison,  he  added,  in  a 
solemn  parenthesis,  that  this  was  two  years 
longer  than  the  siege  of  Troy  lasted.  In  the 
same  speech  was  a  still  choicer  morsel  of  elo 
quence  about  salt*:  "  The  Supreme  Ruler  of  the 
Universe  has  done  everything  to  supply  his 
creatures  with  it ;  man,  the  fleeting  shadow  of 
an  instant,  invested  with  his  little  brief  author 
ity,  has  done  much  to  deprive  them  of  it." 
After  which  he  went  on  to  show  a  really  ex 
tensive  acquaintance  with  the  history  of  salt 
taxes  and  monopolies,  and  with  the  uses  and 
physical  structure  and  surroundings  of  the  min 
eral  itself  —  all  which  might  have  taught  his 
hearers  that  a  man  may  combine  much  erudi 
tion  with  a  total  lack  of  the  sense  of  humor. 
The  salt  tax  is  dragged,  neck  and  heels,  into 


228         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

many  of  Benton's  speeches  much  as  Cooper 
manages,  on  all  possible  occasions,  throughout 
his  novels,  to  show  the  unlikeness  of  the  Bay 
of  Naples  to  the  Bay  of  New  York  —  not  the 
only  point  of  resemblance,  by  the  way,  between 
the  characters  of  the  Missouri  statesman  and 
the  New  York  novelist.  Whether  the  subject 
under  discussion  was  the  taxation  of  bank-notes, 
or  the  abolition  of  slavery,  made  very  little  dif 
ference  to  Benton  as  to  introducing  an  allusion 
to  the  salt  monopoly.  One  of  his  happy  argu 
ments  in  favor  of  the  repeal,  which  was  ad 
dressed  to  an  exceedingly  practical  and  com 
monplace  Congress,  was  that  the  early  Chris 
tian  disciples  had  been  known  as  the  salt  of 
the  earth  —  a  biblical  metaphor,  which  Benton 
kindly  assured  his  hearers  was  very  expressive ; 
and  added  that  a  salt  tax  was  morally  as  well 
as  politically  wrong,  and  in  fact  "  was  a  species 
of  impiety." 

But  in  attacking  some  of  the  abuses  which 
had  developed  put  of  the  tariff  of  1883  Benton 
made  a  very  shrewd  and  practical  speech,  with 
out  permitting  himself  to  incfcilge  in  any  such 
intellectual  pranks  as  accompanied  his  salt  ora 
tions.  He  especially  aimed  at  reducing  the 
drawbacks  on  sugar,  molasses,  and  one  or  two 
other  articles.  In  accordance  with  our  whole 
clumsy,  hap-hazard  system  of  dealing  with  the 


LAST  DAYS   OF  JACKSON! AN  DEMOCRACY.     229 

tariff  we  had  originally  put  very  high  duties  on 
the  articles  in  question,  and  then  had  allowed 
correspondingly  heavy  drawbacks ;  and  yet, 
when  in  1833,  by  Clay's  famous  compromise 
tariff  bill,  the  duties  were  reduced  to  a  frac 
tional  part  of  what  they  had  previously  been, 
no  parallel  reduction  was  made  in  the  draw 
backs,  although  Ben  ton  (supported  by  Web 
ster)  made  a  vain  effort  even  then,  while  the 
compromise  bill  was  on  its  passage,  to  have  the 
injustice  remedied.  As  a  consequence,  the  ex 
porters  of  sugar  and  rum,  instead  of  drawing 
back  the  exact  amounts  paid  into  the  treasury, 
drew  back  several  times  as  much ;  and  the  ri 
diculous  result  was  that  certain  exporters  were 
paid  a  naked  bounty  out  of  the  treasury,  and 
received  pay  for  doing  and  suffering  nothing. 
In  1839  the  drawback  paid  on  the  exportation 
of  refined  sugar  exceeded  the  amount  of  revenue 
derived  from  imported  sugar !  by  over  twenty 
thousand  dollars.-  Benton  showed  this  clearly, 
by  unimpeachable  statistics,  and  went  on  to 
prove  that  in  that  year  the  whole  amount  of 
the  revenue  from  brown  and  clayed  sugar,  plus 
the  above-mentioned  twenty  thousand  dollars, 
was  paid  over  to  twenty-nine  sugar  refiners ; 
and  that  these  men  thus  "drew  back"  from 
the  treasury  what  they  had  never  put  into  it. 
Abuses  equally  gross  existed  in  relation  to  va- 


230  THOMAS   HART  BENT  ON. 

rions  other  articles.  But  in  spite  of  the  clear 
justice  of  his  case  Benton  was  able  at  first  to 
make  but  little  impression  on  Congress ;  and 
it  was  some  time  before  matters  were  straight 
ened  out,  as  all  the  protective  interests  felt 
obliged  to  make  common  cause  with  each  other, 
no  matter  what  evils  might  be  perpetrated  by 
their  taking  such  action. 

Towards  the  close  of  Van  Buren's  administra 
tion,  when  he  was  being  assailed  on  every  side, 

as  well  for  what  Jackson  as  for  what  he  himself 

/ 

had  done  or  left  undone,  one  of  the  chief  accu 
sations  brought  against  him  was  that  he  had 
squandered  the  public  money,  and  that,  since 
Adams  had  been  ousted  from  the  presidency, 
the  expenses  of  running  the  government  had 
increased  out  of  all  proportion  to  what  was 
proper.  There  was  good  ground  for  their  com 
plaint,  as  the  waste  and  peculation  in  some  of 
the  departments  had  been  very  great ;  but  Ben- 
ton,  in  an  elaborate  defense  of  both  Jackson 
and  Van  Buren,  succeeded  in  showing  that  at 
least  certain  of  the  accusations  were  unfounded 
—  although  he  had  to  stretch  a  point  or  two  in 
trying  to  make  good  his  claim  that  the  admin 
istration  was  really  economical,  being  reduced 
to  the  rather  lame  expedient  of  ruling  out  about 
two  thirds  of  the  expenditures  on  the  ground 
that  they  were  "  extraordinary." 


LAST  DAYS    OF  JACKSON  I  AN  DEMOCRACY.    231 

The  charge  of  extravagance  was  one  of  the 
least  of  the  charges  urged  against  the  Jacksonian 
Democrats  during  the  last  days  of  their  rule. 
While  they  had  been  in  power  the  character  of 
the  public  service  had  deteriorated  frightfully, 
both  as  regarded  its  efficiency  and  infinitely 
more  as  regarded  its  honesty ;  and  under  Van 
Buren  the  amount  of  money  stolen  by  the  pub 
lic  officers,  compared  to  the  amount  handed  in 
to  the  treasury,  was  greater  than  ever  before 
or  since.  For  this  the  Jacksonians  were  solely 
and  absolutely  responsible  ;  they  drove  out  the 
merit  system  of  making  appointments,  and  in 
troduced  the  "spoils"  system  in  its  place;  and 
under  the  latter  they  chose  a  peculiarly  dis 
honest  and  incapable  set  of  officers,  whose  sole 
recommendation  was  to  be  found  in  the  knav 
ish  trickery  and  low  cunning  that  enabled  them 
to  manage  the  ignorant  voters  who  formed  the 
backbone  of  Jackson's  party.  The  statesmen 
of  the  Democracy  in  after  days  forgot  the  good 
deeds  of  the  Jacksonians  ;  they  lost  their  at 
tachment  to  the  Union,  and  abandoned  their 
championship  of  hard  money  ;  but  they  never 
ceased  to  cling  to  the  worst  legacy  their  prede 
cessors  had  left  them.  The  engrafting  of  the 
"  spoils  "  system  on  our  government  was,  of  all 
the  results  of  Jacksonian  rule,  the  one  which 
was  most  permanent  in  its  effects. 


232        THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

All  these  causes  —  the  corruption  of  the  pub 
lic  officials,  the  extravagance  of  the  govern 
ment,  and  the  widespread  distress,  which  might 
be  regarded  as  the  aftermath  of  its  ruinous 
financial  policy  —  combined  with  others  that 
were  as  little  to  the  discredit  of  the  Jackso- 
nians  as  they  were  to  the  credit  of  the  Whigs, 
brought  about  the  overthrow  of  the  former. 
There  was  much  poetic  justice  in  the  fact  that 
the  presidential  election  which  decided  their 
fate  was  conducted  on  as  purely  irrational  prin 
ciples,  and  was  as  merely  one  of  sound  and 
fury,  as  had  been  the  case  in  the  election  twelve 
years  previously,  when  they  came  into  power. 
The  Whigs,  having  exhausted  their  language 
in  denouncing  their  opponents  for  nominating 
a  man  like  Andrew  Jackson,  proceeded  to  look 
about  in  their  own  party  to  find  one  who  should 
come  as  near  him  as  possible  in  all  the  attri 
butes  that  had  given  him  so  deep  a  hold  on 
the  people  ;  and  they  succeeded  perfectly  when 
they  pitched  on  the  old  Indian  fighter,  Harrison. 
"  Tippecanoe  "  proved  quite  as  effective  a  war- 
cry  in  bringing  about  the  downfall  of  the  Jtick- 
sonians  as  "  Old  Hickory  "  had  shown  itself  to 
be  a  dozen  years  previously  in  raising  them  up. 
General  Harrison  had  already  shown  himself  to 
be  a  good  soldier,  and  a  loyal  and  honest  pub 
lic  servant,  although  by  no  means  standing  in 


LAST  DAYS  OF  JACKSONTAN  DEMOCRACY.    233 

the  first  rank  either  as  regards  war -craft  or 
state-craft  ;  but  the  mass  of  his  supporters  ap 
parently  considered  the  facts,  or  supposed  facts, 
that  he  lived  in  a  log-cabin  the  walls  of  which 
were  decorated  with  coon-skins,  and  that  he 
drank  hard  cider  from  a  gourd,  as  being  more 
important  than  his  .capacity  as  a  statesman  or 
his  past  services  to  the  nation. 

The  Whigs  having -thus  taken  a  shaft  from 
the  Jacksonians'  quiver,  it  was  rather  amusing 
to  see  the  latter,  in  their  turn,  hold  up  their 
hands  in  horror  at  the  iniquity  of  what  would 
now  be  called  a  "  hurrah  "  canvass  ;  blandly  ig 
noring  the  fact  that  it  was  simply  a  copy  of 
their  own  successful  proceedings.  Says  Ben- 
ton,  with  amusing  gravity  :  "The  class  of  in 
ducements  addressed  io  the  passions  and  im 
aginations  of  the  people  was  such  as  history 
blushes  to  record,"  a  remark  that  provokes  crit 
icism,  when  it  is  remembered  that  Benton  had 
been  himself  a  prominent  actor  on  the  Jack- 
sonian  side  in  the  campaigns  of  '28  and  '32, 
when  it  was  exclusively  to  "  the  passions  and 
imaginations  of  the  people  "  that  all  arguments 
were  addressed. 

The  Democrats  did  not  long  remain  out  of 
power ;  and  they  kept  the  control  of  the  gov 
ernmental  policy  in  their  hands  pretty  steadily 
until  the  time  of  the  civil  war ;  nevertheless  it 


234         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

is  true  that  with  the  defeat  of  Van  Buren  the 
Jacksoniaii  Democracy,  as  such,  lost  forever 
its  grip  on  the  direction  of  national  affairs. 
When,  under  Polk,  the  Democrats  came  back, 
they  came  under  the  lead  of  the  very  men 
whom  the  original  Jacksonians  had  opposed 
and  kept  down.  With  all  their  faults,  Jack 
son  and  Benton  were  strong  Union  men,  and 
under  them  their  party  was  a  Union  party. 
Calhoun  and  South  Carolina,  and  the  disunion- 
ists  in  the  other  Southern  States  were  their  bit 
ter  foes.  But  the  disunion  and  extreme  slav 
ery  elements  within  the  Democratic  ranks  were 
increasing  rapidly  all  the  time  ;  and  they  had 
obtained  complete  and  final  control  when  the 
party  reappeared  as  victors  after  their  defeat  in 
1840.  Until  Van  Buren's  overthrow  the  na 
tionalists  had  held  the  upper  hand  in  shaping 
Democratic  policy  ;  but  after  that  event  the 
leadership  of  the  party  passed  completely  into 
the  hands  of  the  separatists. 

The  defeat  of  Van  Buren  marks  an  era  in 
more  ways  than  one.  During  his  administra 
tion  slavery  played  a  less  prominent  part  in 
politics  than  did  many  other  matters ;  this  was 
never  so  again.  Ilis  administration  was  the 
last  in  which  this  question,  or  the  question 
springing  from  it,  did  not  overtop  and  dwarf  in 
importance  all  others.  Again,  the  presidential 


LAST  DAYS  OF  JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY.     235 

election  of  1840  was  the  last  into  which  slavery 
did  not  enter  as  a  most  important,  and  in  fact 
as  the  vital  and  determining  factor.  In  the 
contest  between  Van  Buren  and  Harrison  it  did 
not  have  the  least  influence  upon  the  result. 
Moreover,  Van  Buren  was  the  last  Democratic 
president  who  ruled  over  a  Union  of  states  ;  all 
his  successors,  up  to  the  time  of  Lincoln's  elec 
tion,  merely  held  sway  over  a  Union  of  sec 
tions.  The  spirit  of  separation  had  identified 
itself  with  the  maintenance  of  slavery,  and  the 
South  was  rapidly  uniting  into  a  compact  array 
of  states  witli  interests  that  were  hostile  to  the 
North  on  the  point  most  vitally  affecting  the 
welfare  of  the  whole  country. 

No  great  question  involving  the  existence 
of  slavery  was  brought  before  the  attention  of 
Congress  during  Van  Buren's  term  of  office  ; 
nor  was  the  matter  mooted  except  in  the  eter 
nal  wrangles  over  receiving  the  abolitionist  pe 
titions.  Benton  kept  silent  in  these  discussions, 
although  voting  to  receive  the  petitions.  As 
he  grew  older  he  continually  grew  wiser,  and 
better  able  to  do  good  legislative  work  on  all 
subjects ;  but  he  .was  not  yet  able  to  realize 
that  the  slavery  question  was  one  which  could 
not  be  kept  down,  and  which  was  bound  to 
force  itself  into  the  sphere  of  national  politics. 
He  still  insisted  that  it  was  only  dragged  be- 


236  THOMAS   HART  BE  NT  ON. 

fore  Congress  by  n  few  fanatics  at  the  North, 
and  that  in  the  South  it  was  made  the  instru 
ment  by  which  designing  and  unscrupulous  men 
wished  to  break  up  the  federal  republic.  His 
devotion  to  the  Union,  ever  with  him  the  chief 
and  overmastering  thought,  made  him  regard 
with  horror  and  aversion  any  man,  at  the  North 
or  at  the  South,  who  brought  forward  a  ques 
tion  so  fraught  with  peril  to  its  continuance. 
He  kept  trying  to  delude  himself  into  the -be 
lief  that  the  discussion  and  the  danger  would 
alike  gradually  die  away,  and  the  former  state 
of  peaceful  harmony  between  the  sections,  and 
freedom  from  disunion  excitement,  would  re 
turn. 

But  the  time  for  such  an  ending  already 
lay  in  the  past;  thereafter  the  outlook  was  to 
grow  steadily  darker  year  by  year.  Slavery 
lowered  like  a  thunder-storm  on  the  horizon  ; 
and  though  sometimes  it  might  seem  for  a 
moment  to  break  away,  yet  in  reality  it  had 
reached  that  stage  when,  until  the  final  all- 
engulfing  outburst  took  place,  the  clouds  were 
bound  for  evermore  to  return  after  the  rain. 


CHAPTER    XL 
THE   PRESIDENT    WITHOUT   A  PARTY. 

THE  Whigs  in  1840  completely  overthrew 
the  Democrats,  and  for  the  first  time  elected 
a  president  and  held  the  majority  in  both 
houses  of  Congress.  Yet,  as  it  turned  out,  all 
that  they  really  accomplished  was  to  elect  a 
president  without  a  party,  for  Harrison  died 
when  he  had  hardly  more  than  sat  in  the  pres 
idential  chair,  and  was  succeeded  by  the  vice- 
president,  Tyler  of  Virginia. 

Harrison  was  a  true  Whig  ;  he  was,  when 
nominated,  a  prominent  member  of  the  Whig 
party,  although  of  course  not  to  be  compared 
with  its  great  leader,  Henry  Clay,  or  with  its 
most  mighty  intellectual  chief  and  champion 
in  the  Northeast,  Daniel  Webster,  whose  mu 
tual  rivalry  had  done  much  to  make  his  nomi 
nation  possible.  Tyler,  however,  could  hardly 
be  called  a  Whig  at  all ;  on  the  contrary,  he 
belonged  rightfully  in  the  ranks  of  those  ex 
treme  Democrats  who  were  farthest  removed 
from  the  Whig  standard,  and  who  were  as 


238         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

much  displeased  with  the  Union  sentiments 
of  the  Jacksonians  as  they  were  with  the  per 
sonal  tyranny  of  Jackson  himself.  He  was 
properly  nothing  but  a  dissatisfied  Democrat, 
who  hated  the  Jacksonians,  and  had  been 
nominated  only  because  the  Whig  politicians 
wished  to  strengthen  their  ticket  and  insure 
its  election  by  bidding  for  the  votes  of  the  dis 
contented  in  the  ranks  of  their  foes.  Now  a 
chance  stroke  of  death  put  the  presidency  in 
the  hands  of  one  who  represented  this,  the 
smallest,  element  in  the  coalition  that  over 
threw  Van  Buren. 

The  principles  of  the  Whigs  were  hazily  out 
lined  at  the  best,  and  the  party  was  never  a 
very  creditable  organization  ;  indeed,  through 
out  its  career,  it  could  be  most  easily  defined  as 
the  opposition  to  the  Democracy.  It  was  a  free 
constructionist  party,  believing  in  giving  a  lib 
eral  interpretation  to  the  doctrines  of  the  Con 
stitution  ;  otherwise,  its  principles  were  purely 
economic,  as  it  favored  a  high  tariff,  internal 
improvements,  a  bank,  and  kindred  schemes  ; 
and  its  leaders,  however  they  might  quarrel 
among  themselves,  agreed  thoroughly  in  their 
devout  hatred  of  Jackson  and  all  his  works. 

It  was  on  this  last  point  only  that  Tyler 
came  in.  His  principles  had  originally  been 
ultra-Democratic.  He  had  been  an  extreme 


THE  PRESIDENT  WITHOUT  A  PARTY.      239 

strict  constructionist,  bad  belonged  to  that  wing 
of  the  Democracy  which  inclined  more  and 
more  towards  separation,  and  had  thus,  on  sev 
eral  grounds,  found  himself  opposed  to  Jack 
son,  Benton,  and  their  followers.  Indeed,  he 
went  into  opposition  to  his  original  party  for 
reasons  akin  to  those  that  influenced  Calhoun  ; 
and  Seward's  famous  remark  about  the  "  ill- 
starred  coalition  between  Whigs  and  Nulli- 
fiers "  might  with  certain  changes  have  been 
applied  to  the  presidential  election  of  1840 
quite  as  well  as  to  the  senatorial  struggles  to 
which  it  had  reference. 

Tyler,  however,  had  little  else  in  common 
with  Calhoun,  and  least  of  all  his  intellect. 
He  has  been  called  a  mediocre  man ;  but  this 
is  unwarranted  flattery.  He  was  a  politician 
of  monumental  littleness.  Owing  to  the  nicely- 
divided  condition  of  parties,  and  to  the  sheer 
accident  which  threw  him  into  a  position  of 
such  prominence  that  it  allowed  him  to  hold 
the  balance  of  power  between  them,  he  was  en 
abled  to  turn  politics  completely  topsy-turvy ; 
but  his  chief  mental  and  moral  attributes  were 
peevishness,  fretful  obstinacy,  inconsistency,  in 
capacity  to  make  up  his  own  mind,  and  the 
ability  to  quibble  indefinitely  over  the  most  mi 
croscopic  and  hair-splitting  plays  upon  words, 
together  with  an  inordinate  vanity  that  so 


240  THOMAS  HART  BE  NT  ON. 

blinded  him  to  all  outside  feeling  as  to  make 
him  really  think  that  he  stood  a  chance  to  be 
renominated  for  the  presidency. 

The  Whigs,  especially  in  the  Senate,  under 
Henry  Clay,  prepared  tit  once  to  push  through 
various  measures  that  should  undo  the  work  of 
the  Jacksonians.  Clay  was  boastfully  and  dom 
ineeringly  sure  of  the  necessity  of  applying  to 
actual  governmental  work  the  economic  the 
ories  that  formed  the  chief  stock  in  trade  of 
his  party.  But  it  was  precisely  on  these  eco 
nomic  theories  that  Tyler  split  off  from  the 
Whigs.  The  result  was  that  very  shortly  the 
real  leader  of  the  dominant  party,  backed  by 
almost  all  his  fellow  party  men  in  both  houses 
of  Congress,  was  at  daggers  drawn  with  the 
nominal  Whig  president,  who  in  his  turn  was 
supported  only  by  a  "  corporal's  guard  "  of  fol 
lowers  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  by  all 
the  office  -  holders  whom  fear  of  removal  re 
duced  to  obsequious  subserviency,  and  by  a 
knot  of  obscure  politicians  who  used  him  for 
their  own  ends,  and  worked  alternately  on  his 
vanity  and  on  his  fears.  The  Democrats,  led 
by  Benton,  played  out  their  own  game,  and 
were  the  only  parties  to  the  three-cornered 
fight  who  came  out  of  it  with  profit.  The  de 
tails  now  offer  rather  dry  reading,  as  the  eco 
nomic  theories  of  all  the  contestants  were  more 


THE  PRESIDENT  WITHOUT  A  PARTY.      2il 

or  less  crude,  the  results  of  the  conflict  inde 
cisive,  and  the  effects  upon  our  history  ephem 
eral. 

Clay  began  by  a  heated  revival  of  one  of 
Jackson's  worst  ideas,  namely,  that  when  the 
people  elect  a  president  they  thereby  mark 
with  the  seal  of  their  approval  any  and  every 
measure  with  which  that  favored  mortal  or  his 
advisers  may  consider  themselves  identified, 
and  indorse  all  his  and  their  previous  actions. 
He  at  once  declared  that  the  people  had  shown, 
by  the  size  of  Harrison's  majority,  that  they 
demanded  the  repeal  of  the  independent  treas 
ury  act,  and  the  passage  of  various  other  laws 
in  accordance  with  some  of  his  own  favorite 
hobbies,  two  out  of  three  voters,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  probably  never  having  given  a  second 
thought  to  any  of  them.  Accordingly  he  pro 
ceeded  to  introduce  a  whole  batch  of  bills, 
which  he  alleged  that  it  was  only  yielding  due 
respect  to  the  spirit  of  Democracy  to  pass  forth 
with. 

Ben  ton,  however,  even  outdid  Clay  in  pa}Ting" 
homage  to  what  he  was  pleased  to  call  the 
"  democratic  idea."  At  this  time  he  speaks  of 
the  last  session  of  the  Twenty-Sixth  Congress 
as  being  "  barren  of  measures,  and  necessarily 
so,  as  being  the  last  of  an  administration  super 
seded  by  the  popular  voice  and  soon  to  expire ; 

16 


242         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

and  therefore  restricted  by  a  sense  of  propriety, 
during  the  brief  remainder  of  its  existence,  to  the 
details  of  business  and  the  routine  of  service/' 
According  to  this  theory  an  interregnum  of 
some  sixteen  weeks  would  intervene  between 
the  terms  of  service  of  every  two  presidents. 
He  also  speaks  of  Tyler  as  having,  when  the 
legislature  of  Virginia  disapproved  of  a  course 
he  wished  to  follow,  resigned  his  seat  "  in  obe 
dience  to  the  democratic  principle,"  which,  ac 
cording  to  his  views,  thus  completely  nullified 
the  section  of  the  Constitution  providing  for  a 
six  years'  term  of  service  in  the  Senate.  In 
truth  Benton,  like  most  other  Jacksonian  and 
Jeffersonian  leaders,  became  both  foolish  and 
illogical  when  he  began  to  talk  of  the  bundle  of 
vague  abstractions,  which  he  knew  collectively 
as  the  "democratic  principle."  Although  not 
so  bad  as  many  of  his  school  he  had  yet  gradu 
ally  worked  himself  up  to  a  belief  that  it  was 
almost  impious  to  pay  anything  but  servile  heed 
to  the  "  will  of  the  majority;  "  and  was  quite 
unconscious  that  to  surrender  one's  own  manhood 
and  judgment  to  a  belief  in  the  divine  right  of 
kings  Avas  only  one  degree  more  ignoble,  and 
was  not  a  shadow  more  logical,  and  but  little 
more  defensible,  than  it  was  blindly  to  deify  a 
majority  —  not  of  the  whole  people,  but  merely 
of  a  small  fraction  consisting  of  those  who  hap- 


THE  PRESIDENT  WITHOUT  A  PARTY.      243 

pened  to  be  of  a  certain  sex,  to  have  reached  a 
certain  age,  to  belong  to  a  certain  race,  and  to 
fulfill  some  other  conditions.  In  fact  there  is 
no  natural  or  divine  law  in  the  matter  at  all ; 
how  large  a  portion  of  the  population  should 
be  trusted  with  the  control  of  the  government 
is  a  question  of  expediency  merely.  In  any 
purely  native  American  community  manhood 
suffrage  works  infinitely  better  than  would  any 
other  system  of  government,  and  throughout 
our  country  at  large,  in  spite  of  the  large  num 
ber  of  ignorant  foreign-born  or  colored  voters, 
it  is  probably  preferable  as  it  stands  to  any 
modification  of  it ;  but  there  is  no  more  "  nat 
ural  right "  why  a  white  man  over  twenty-one 
should  vote  than  there  is  why  a  negro  woman 
under  eighteen  should  not.  "  Civil  rights  "  and 
"  personal  freedom  "  are  not  terms  that  neces 
sarily  imply  the  right  to  vote.  People  make 
mistakes  when  governing  themselves,  exactly  as 
they  make  mistakes  when  governing  others ; 
all  that  can  be  said  is,  that  in  the  former  case 
their  self-interest  is  on  the  side  of  good  govern 
ment,  whereas  in  the  latter  it  always  may  be, 
and  often  must  be,  the  reverse;  so  that,  when 
any  people  reaches  a  certain  stage  of  mental 
development  and  of  capacity  to  take  care  of  its 
own  concerns,  it  is  far  better  that  it  should  it 
self  take  the  reins.  The  distinctive  features  of 


244         THOMAS  HART  BKNTON. 

the  American  system  are  its  guarantees  of  per 
sonal  independence  and  individual  freedom  ; 
that  is,  as  far  as  possible,  it  guarantees  to  eacli 
man  his  right  to  live  as  lie  chooses  and  to  regu 
late  his  own  private  affairs  as  he  wishes,  with 
out  being  interfered  with  or  tyrannized  over  by 
an  individual,  or  by  an  oligarchic  minority,  or 
by  a  democratic  majority;  while,  when  the  in 
terests  of  the  whole  community  are  at  stake,  it 
is  found  best  in  the  long  run  to  let  them  be  man 
aged  in  accordance  with  the  wishes  of  the  ma 
jority  of  those  presumably  concerned. 

Clay's  flourish  of  trumpets  foreboded  trouble 
and  disturbance  to  the  Jacksonian  camp.  At 
last  he  stood  at  the  head  of  a  party  controlling 
both  branches  of  the  legislative  body,  and  de 
voted  to  his  behests  ;  and,  if  a  little  doubtful 
about  the  president,  he  still  believed  he  could 
frighten  him  into  doing  as  he  was  bid.  He 
had  long  been  in  the  minority,  and  had  seen 
his  foes  ride  roughshod  over  all  he  most  believed 
in  ;  and  now  he  prepared  to  pay  them  back,  in 
their  own  coin  and  to  leave  a  heavy  balance  on 
his  side  of  the  reckoning.  N<jr  could  any  Jack 
sonian  have  shown  himself  more  domineering 
and  influenced  by  a  more  insolent  disregard  for 
the  rights  of  others  than  Clay  did  in  his  hour 
of  triumph.  On  the  other  side,  Benton  braced 
himself  with  dogged  determination  for  the 


THE  PRESIDENT  WITHOUT  A  PARTY.      245 

struggle  ;  for  lie  was  one  of  those  men  who 
fight  a  losing  or  a  winning  battle  with  equal 
resolution. 

Tyler's  first  message  to  Congress  read  like  a 
pretty  good  Whig  document.  It  did  not  dis 
play  any  especial  signs  of  his  former  strict  con 
struction  theories,  and  gave  little  hope  to  the 
Democrats.  The  leader  of  the  latter,  indeed, 
Ben  ton,  commented  upon  both  it  and  its  author 
with  rather  grandiloquent  severity,  on  account 
of  its  latitudinarian  bias,  and  of  its  recommen 
dation  of  a  bank  of  some  sort.  However,  the 
ink  with  which  the  message  was  written  could 
hardly  have  been  dry  before  the  president's 
mind  began  to  change.  He  himself  probably 
had  very  little  idea  what  he  intended  to  do,  and 
so  contrived  to  give  the  Whigs  the  impression 
that  he  would  act  in  accordance  with  their 
wishes  ;  but  the  leaven  had  already  begun 
working  in  his  mind,  and,  not  having  much  to 
work  on,  soon  changed  it  so  completely  that  he 
was  willing  practically  to  eat  his  own  words. 

Shortly  after  Tyler  had  sent  in  his  message 
outlining  what  legislation  he  deemed  proper,  he 
being  by  virtue  of  his  position  the  nominal  and 
titular  leader  of  the  Whigs,  Clay,  who  was  their 
real  and  very  positive  chief,  and  who  was,  more 
over,  determined  to  assert  his  chieftainship,  in 
his  turn  laid  down  a  programme  for  his  party  to 


246         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

follow,  introducing  a  series  of  resolutions  de 
claring  it  necessary  to  pass  a  bill  to  repeal  tlie 
sub-treasury  act,  another  to  establish  a  bank, 
another  to  distribute  the  proceeds  of  the  public 
land  sales,  and  one  or  two  more,  to  which  was 
afterwards  added  a  bankruptcy  measure. 

The  sub-treasury  bill  was  first  taken  up  and 
promptly  passed  and  signed.  Benton,  of  course, 
led  the  hopeless  fight  against  it,  making  a  long 
and  elaborate  speech,  insisting  that  the  finances 
were  in  excellent  shape,  as  they  were,  showing 
the  advantages  of  hard  money,  and  denouncing 
the  bill  on  account  of  the  extreme  suddenness 
with  which  it  took  effect,  and  because  it  made 
no  provision  for  any  substitute.  He  also  al 
luded  caustically  to  the  curious  and  anomalous 
bank  bill,  which  was  then  being  patched  up  by 
the  Whig  leaders  so  as  to  get  it  into  some 
such  shape  that  the  president  would  sign  it. 

The  other  three  important  measures,  that  is, 
the  bank,  distribution,  and  bankruptcy  bills, 
were  all  passed  nearly  together ;  as  Benton 
pointed  out,  they  were  got  through  only  by  a 
species  of  bargain  and  sale,  the  chief  supporters 
of  each  agreeing  to  support  the  other,  so  as  to 
get  their  own  pet  measure  through.  "All 
must  go  together  or  fall  together.  This  is  the 
decree  out  of  doors.  When  the  sun  dips  below 
the  horizon  a  private  congress  is  held  ;  the  fate 


THE  PRESIDENT   WITHOUT  A  PARTY.      247 

of  the  measures  is  decided ;  a  bundle  is  tied 
together ;  and  while  one  goes  ahead  as  a  bait, 
another  is  held  back  as  a  rod." 

The  bankruptcy  bill  went  through  and  was 
signed.  It  was  urged  by  all  the  large  debtor 
class,  whose  ranks  had  been  filled  to  overflowing 
by  the  years  of  wild  speculation  and  general 
bank  suspension  and  insolvency.  These  debtors 
were  quite  numerous  enough  to  constitute  an 
important  factor  in  politics,  but  Benton  disre 
garded  them  nevertheless,  and  fought  the  bill 
as  stoutly  as  he  did  its  companions,  alleging 
that  it  was  a  gross  outrage  on  honesty  and  on 
the  rights  of  property,  and  was  not  a  bankrupt 
law  at  all,  but  practically  an  insolvent  law  for 
the  abolition  of  debts  at  the  will  of  the  debtor. 
He  pointed  out  grave  and  numerous  defects  of 
detail,  and  gave  an  exhaustive  abstract  of  bank 
ruptcy  legislation  in  general;  the  speech  gave 
evidence  of  the  tireless  industry  and  wide  range 
of  learning  for  which  Benton  was  preeminently 
distinguished. 

The  third  bill  to  be  taken  up  and  passed  was 
that  providing  for  the  distribution  of  the  public 
lands  revenue,  and  thus  indirectly  for  assuming 
the  debts  of  the  states.  Tyler,  in  his  message, 
had  characteristically  stated  that,  though  it 
would  be  wholly  unconstitutional  for  the  fed 
eral  government  to  assume  the  debts  of  the 


248  THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

states,  yet  it  would  be  highly  proper  for  it  to 
give  the  latter  money  wherewith  to  pay  them. 
Clay  had  always  been  an  enthusiastic  advocate 
of  a  distribution  bill ;  and  accordingly  one  was 
now  passed  and  signed  with  the  least  possible 
delay.  It  was  an  absolutely  indefensible  meas 
ure.  The  treasury  was  empty,  and  loan  and 
tax  bills  were  pending  at  the  very  moment,  in 
order  to  supply  money  for  the  actual  running 
of  the  government.  As  Benton  pointed  out, 
Congress  had  been  called  together  (a  special 
session  having  been  summoned  by  Harrison  be 
fore  his  death)  to  raise  revenue,  and  the  first 
thing  done  was  to  squander  it.  The  distribu 
tion  took  place  when  the  treasury  reports 
showed  a  deficit  of  sixteen  millions  of  dollars. 
The  bill  was  pushed  through  mainly  by  the 
states  which  had  repudiated  their  debts  in 
whole  or  in  part ;  and  as  these  debts  were 
largely  owed  abroad,  many  prominent  foreign 
banking-houses  and  individuals  took  an  active 
part  in  lobbying  for  the  bill.  Benton  was  em 
phatically  right  in  his  opposition  to  the  measure, 
but  he  was  very  wrong  in  some  of  the  grounds 
lie  took.  Thus  he  inveighed  vigorously  against 
the  foreign  capitalists  who  had  come  to  help 
push  the  bill  through  Congress  ;  but  lie  did  not 
have  anything  to  say  against  the  scoundrelly 
dishonesty  displayed  by  certain  states  towards 


THE  PRESIDENT  WITHOUT  A  PARTY.     249 

their  creditors,  which  had  forced  these  capital 
ists  into  the  endeavor  to  protect  themselves. 
He  also  incidentally  condemned  the  original 
assumption  by  the  national  government  of  the 
debts  of  the  states,  at  the  time  of  the  formation 
of  the  Constitution,  which  was  an  absolute  ne 
cessity  ;  and  his  constitutional  views  through 
out  seem  rather  strained.  But  he  was  right 
beyond  cavil  on  the  main  point.  It  was  crim 
inal  folly  to  give  the  states  the  impression  that 
they  would  be  allowed  to  create  debts  over 
which  Congress  could  have  no  control,  yet 
which  Congress  in  the  end  would  give  them 
tho  money  to  pay.  To  reward  a  state  for  re 
pudiating  a  debt  by  giving  her  the  wherewithal 
to  pay  it  was  a  direct  and  unequivocal  encour 
agement  of  dishonesty.  In  every  respect  the 
bill  was  wholly  improper;  and  Benton's  atti 
tude  towards  it  and  towards  similar  schemes 
was  incomparably  better  than  the  position  of 
Clay,  Webster,  and  the  other  Whigs. 

Both  the  bankrupt  bill  and  the  distribution 
bill  were  repealed  very  shortly ;  the  latter  be 
fore  it  had  time  to  take  effect.  This  was  an 
emphatic  indorsement  by  the  public  of  Benton's 
views,  and  a  humiliating  rebuke  to  the  Whig 
authors  of  the  measures.  Indeed,  the  whole 
legislation  of  the  session  was  almost  absolutely 
fruitless  in  its  results. 


250  THOMAS  HART  BENT  ON. 

One  feature  of  the  struggle  was  an  attempt 
by  Clay,  promptly  and  successfully  resisted  by 
Ben  ton  and  Calhoun,  to  institute  the  hour  limit 
for  speeches  in  the  Senate.  There  was  a  good 
deal  of  excuse  for  Clay's  motion.  The  House 
could  cut  off  debate  by  the  previous  question, 
which  the  Senate  could  not,  and  nevertheless 
had  found  it  necessary  to  establish  the  hour 
limit  in  addition.  Of  course  it  is  highly  unde 
sirable  that  there  should  not  be  proper  freedom 
of  debate  in  Congress  ;  but  it  is  quite  as  hurtful 
to  allow  a  minority  to  exercise  their  privileges 
improperly.  The  previous  question  is  often 
abused  and  used  tyrannically ;  but  on  the  whole 
it  is  a  most  invaluable  aid  to  legislation.  Ben- 
ton,  however,  waxed  hot  and  wrathful  over  the 
proposed  change  in  the  Senate  rules.  He,  with 
Calhoun  and  their  followers,  had  been  consum 
ing  an  immense  amount  of  time  in  speech-mak 
ing  against  the  Whig  measures,  and  in  offering 
amendments;  not  with  any  hopes  of  bettering 
the  bills,  but  for  outside  effect,  and  to  annoy 
their  opponents.  He  gives  an  amusingly  naive 
account  of  their  course  of  action,  and  the  rea 
sons  for  it,  substantially  as  follows  :  — 

The  Democratic  senators  acted  upon  a  system,  and 
with  a  thorough  organization  and  a  perfect  under 
standing.  Being  a  minority,  and  able  to  do  nothing, 
they  became  assailants,  and  attacked  incessantly  ;  not 


THE  PRESIDENT  WITHOUT  A   PARTY.      251 

by  formal  orations  against  the  whole  body  of  a  meas 
ure,  but  by  sudden,  short,  and  pungent  speeches  di 
rected  against  the  vulnerable  parts,  and  pointed  by 
proffered  amendments.  Amendments  were  continu 
ally  offered  —  a  great  number  being  prepared  every 
night  and  placed  in  suitable  hands  for  use  the  next 
"lay  —  always  commendably  calculated  to  expose  an 
evil  and  to  present  a  remedy.  Near  forty  proposi- 
itions  of  amendment  were  offered  to  the  first  fiscal 
agent  bill  alone  —  the  yeas  and  nays  were  taken  upon 
them  seven  and  thirty  times.  All  the  other  promi 
nent  bills. —  distribution,  bankrupt,  fiscal  corporation, 
new  tariff  act,  called  revenue  —  were  served  the  same 
way  ;  every  proposed  amendment  made  an  issue. 
TIu3re  were  but  twenty-two  of  us,  but  every  one  was 
a  speaker  and  effective.  The  "  Globe  "  newspaper 
was  a  powerful  ally,  setting  out  all  we  did  to  the  best 
advantage  in  strong  editorials,  and  carrying  out  our 
speeches,  fresh  and  hot,  to  the  people  ;  and  we  felt 
victorious  in  the  midst  of  unbroken  defeats. 

It  is  no  wonder  that  such  rank  filibustering, 
coupled  with  the  exasperating  self-complacency 
of  its  originators,  should  have  excited  in  Whig 
bosoms  every  desperate  emotion  short  of  homi 
cidal  mania. 

Clay,  to  cut  off  such  useless  talk,  gave  notice 
that  he  would  move  to  have  the  time  for  debate 
for  each  individual  restricted ;  remarking  very 
truthfully  that  he  did  not  believe  the  people 
at  large  would  complain  of  the  abridgment  of 


252  THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

speeches  in  Congress.  But  the  Democratic  sen 
ators,  all  rather  fond  of  windy  orations,  fa  rly 
foamed  at  the  mouth  at  what  they  affectec  to 
deem  such  an  infringement  of  their  Iiberti3s; 
and  actually  took  the  inexcusable  resolutioi  of 
bidding  defiance  to  the  rule  if  it  was  adopted, 
and  refusing  to  obey  it,  no  matter  what  degree 
of  violence  their  conduct  might  bring  about,  — 
a  resolution  that  was  wholly  unpardonable. 
Benton  was  selected  to  voice  their  views  upon 
the  matter,  which  he  did  in  a  long,,  and  not 
ve'ry  wise  speech;  while  Callioun  was  quite  as 
emphatic  in  his  threats  of  what  would  happen 
if  attempt  should  be  made  to  enforce  the  p  -o- 
posed  rule.  Clay  was  always  much  bolder  in 
opening  a  campaign  than  in  carrying  it  through; 
and  when  it  came  to  putting  his  words  into 
deeds,  he  wholly  lacked  the  nerve  which  would 
have  enabled  him  to  contend  with  two  such 
men  as  the  senators  from  Missouri  and  South 
Carolina.  Had  he  possessed  a  temperament 
like  that  of  either  of  his  opponents,  he  would 
have  gone  on  and  have  simply  forced  acquies 
cence;  for  any  legislative  body  can  certainly 
enforce  what  rules  it  may  choose  to  make  as  to 
the  conduct  of  its  own  members  in  addressing 
it ;  but  his  courage  failed  him,  and  he  withdrew 
from  the  contest,  leaving  the  victory  with  tli^ 
Democrats. 


THE  PRESIDENT  WITHOUT  A  PARTY.      253 

When  the  question  of  the  re-charter  of  the 
district  banks  came  up,  it  of  course  gave  Benton 
another  chance  to  attack  his  favorite  foe.  He 
offered  a  very  proper  amendment,  which  was 
voted  down,  to  prohibit  the  banks  from  issuing 
a  currency  of  small  notes,  fixing  upon  twenty 
dollars  as  being  the  lowest  limit.  This  he  sup 
ported  in  a  strong  speech,  wherein  he  once 
again  argued  at  length  in  favor  of  a  gold  and 
silver  currency,  and  showed  the  evil  effects  of 
small  bank-notes,  which  might  not  be,  and  often 
were  not,  redeemable  at  par.  He  very  properly 
pointed  out  that  to  have  a  sound  currency,  es 
pecially  in  all  the  smaller  denominations,  was 
really  of  greater  interest  to  the  working  men 
than  to  any  one  else. 

The  great  measure  of  the  session,  however, 
and  the  one  that  was  intended  to  be  the  final 
crown  and  glory  of  the  Whig  triumph,  was  the 
bill  to  establish  a  new  national  bank.  Among 
the  political  theories  to  which  Clay  clung  most 
closely,  only  the  belief  in  a  bank  ranked  higher 
in  his  estimation  than  his  devotion  to  a  protec 
tive  tariff.  The  establishment  of  a  national 
bank  seemed  to  him  to  be  the  chief  object  of  a 
Whig  success;  and  that  it  would  work  imme 
diate  and  immense  benefit  to  the  country  was 
with  him  an  article  of  faith.  With  both  houses 
of  Congress  under  his  control,  he  at  once  pre- 


254         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

pared  to  push  his  pet  measure  through,  impa 
tiently  brushing  aside  all  resistance. 

But  at  the  very  outset  difficulty  was  feared 
from  the  action  of  the  president.  Tyler  could 
not  at  first  make  up  his  mind  what  to  do;  or 
rather,  he  made  it  up  in  half  a  dozen  different 
ways  every  day.  His  peevishness,  vacillation, 
ambitious  vanity,  and  sheer  puzzle-headedness 
made  him  incline  first  to  the  side  of  his  new 
friends  and  present  supporters,  the  Whigs,  and 
then  to  that  of  his  old  democratic  allies,  whose 
views  on  the  bank,  as  on  most  other  questions, 
he  had  so  often  openly  expressed  himself  as 
sharing.  But  though  his  mind  oscillated  like 
a  pendulum,  yet  each  time  it  swung  farther 
and  farther  over  to  the  side  of  the  Democracy, 
and  it  began  to  look  as  if  he  would  certainly 
in  the  end  come  to  a  halt  in  the  camp  of  the 
enemies  of  the  Whigs  ;  his  approach  to  this 
destination  was  merely  hastened  by  Clay's  over 
bearing  violence  and  injudicious  taunts. 

However,  at  first  Tyler  did  not  dare  to  come 
out  openly  against  any  and  all  bank  laws,  but 
tried  to  search  round  for  some  compromise 
measure  ;  and  as  he  could  not  invent  a  com 
promise  in  fact,  he  came  to  the  conclusion  that 
one  in  words  would  do  just  as  well.  He  said 
that  his  conscience  would  not  permit  him  to 
sign  a  bill  to  establish  a  bank  that  was  called 


THE  PRESIDENT  WITHOUT  A    PARTY.      255 

a  bank,  but  that  he  was  willing  to  sign  a  bill 
establishing  such  an  institution  provided  that  it 
was  called  something  else,  though  it  should  pob- 
sess  all  the  properties  of  a  bank.  Such  a  pro 
posal  opened  a  wide  field  for  the  endless  quib 
bling  in  which  his  soul  delighted. 

The  secretary  of  the  treasury,  in  response  to 
a  call  from  the  Senate,  furnished  a  plan  for  a 
bank,  having  modeled  it  studiously  so  as  to 
overcome  the  president's  scruples  ;  and  a  select 
committee  of  the  Senate  at  once  shaped  a  bill 
in  accordance  with  the  plans.  Said  Benton  : 
"  Even  the  title  was  made  ridiculous  to  please 
the  president,  though  not  so  much  so  as  he 
wished.  He  objected  to  the  name  of  bank 
either  in  the  title  or  the  body  of  the  charter, 
and  proposed  to  style  it  '  Fiscal  Institute  ; '  and 
afterwards  the  4  Fiscal  Agent,'  and  finally  the 
4  Fiscal  Corporation. ' '  Such  preposterous  folly 
on  the  president's  part  was  more  than  the  hot- 
blooded  and  overbearing  Kentuckian  could 
stand ;  and,  in  spite  of  his  absorbing  desire  for 
the  success  of  his  measure,  and  of  the  vital  ne 
cessity  for  conciliating  Tyler,  Clay  could  not 
bring  himself  to  adopt  such  a  ludicrous  title, 
even  though  he  had  seen  that  the  charter  pro 
vided  that  the  institution,  whatever  it  might  be 
styled  in  form,  should  in  fact  have  all  the  prop 
erties  of  a  bank.  After  a  while,  however,  a 


256         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

compromise  title  was  agreed  on,  but  only  a 
shadow  less  imbecile  than  the  original  one  pro 
posed  by  the  president  ;  and  it  was  agreed  to 
call  the  measure  the  "  Fiscal  Bank  "  bill. 

The  president  vetoed  it,  but  stated  that  he 
was  ready  to  approve  any  similar  bill  that 
should  be  free  from  the  objections  he  named. 
Clay  could  not  resist  reading  Tyler  a  lecture  on 
his  misconduct,  during  the  course  of  a  speech  in 
the  Senate  ;  but  the  Whigs  generally  smothered 
their  resentment,  and  set  about  preparing  some 
thing  which  the  president  would  sign,  and  this 
time  concluded  that  they  would  humor  him  to 
the  top  of  his  bent,  even  by  choosing  a  title  as 
ridiculous  as  he  wished  ;  so  they  styled  their 
bill  one  to  establish  a  "  Fiscal  Corporation." 
Benton  held  the  title  up  to  well-deserved  deri 
sion,  and  showed  that,  though  there  had  been 
quite  an  elaborate  effort  to  disguise  the  form  of 
the  measure,  and  to  make  it  purport  to  establish 
a  bank  that  should  have  the  properties  of  a 
treasury,  yet  that  in  reality  it  was  simply  a  re 
vival  of  the  old  scheme  under  another  name. 
The  Whigs  swallowed  the  sneers  of  their  oppo 
nents  as  best  they  could,  and  passed  their  bill. 

The  president  again  interposed  his  veto.  An 
intrigue  was  going  on  among  a  few  unimpor 
tant  congressmen  and  obscure  office-holders  to 
form  a  new  party  with  Tyler  at  its  head  ;  and 


THE  PRESIDENT  WITHOUT  A  PARTY.      257 

the  latter  willingly  entered  into  the  plan,  his 
mind,  which  was  not  robust  at  the  best,  being 
completely  dazzled  by  his  sudden  elevation  and 
his  wild  hopes  that  he  could  continue  to  keep 
the  place  which  he  had  reached.  He  had  given 
the  Whigs  reason  to  expect  that  he  would  sign 
the  bill,  and  had  taken  none  of  his  cabinet  into 
his  confidence.  So,  when  his  veto  came  in,  it 
raised  a  perfect  whirlwind  of  wrath  and  bitter 
disappointment.  His  cabinet  all  resigned,  ex 
cept  Webster,  who  stayed  to  finish  the  treaty 
with  Great  Britain  ;  and  the  Whigs  formally 
read  him  out  of  the  party.  The  Democrats 
looked  on  with  huge  enjoyment,  and  patted 
Tyler  on  the  back,  for  they  could  see  that  he 
was  bringing  their  foes  to  ruin  ;  but  neverthe 
less  they  despised  him  heartily,  and  abandoned 
him  wholly  when  he  had  served  their  turn. 
Left  without  any  support  among--Lhe  regulars 
of  either  side,  and  his  own  proposed  third  party 
turning  out  a  still-born  abortion,  he  simply 
played  out  his  puny  part  until  his  term  ended, 
and  then  dropped  noiselessly  out  of  sight.  It  is 
only  the  position  he  filled,  and  not  in  the  least 
his  ability,  for  either  good  or  bad,  in  filling  it, 
that  prevents  his  name  from  sinking  into  mer 
ciful  oblivion. 

There  was  yet  one  more  brief  spasm  over  the 
bank,  however;  the  president  sending  in  a  plan 

17 


258        THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

for  a  "  Fiscal  Agent,"  to  be  called  a  Board  of 
Exchequer.  Congress  contemptuously  refused 
to  pay  any  attention  to  the  proposition,  Benton 
showing  its  utter  unworthiness  in  an  excellent 
speech,  one  of  the  best  that  he  made  on  the 
whole  financial  question. 

Largely  owing  to  the  cross  purposes  at  which 
the  president  and  his  party  were  working,  the 
condition  of  the  treasury  became  very  bad.  It 
sought  to  provide  for  its  immediate  wants  by 
the  issue  of  treasury  notes,  differing  from  for 
mer  notes  of  the  kind  in  that  they  were  made 
reissuable.  Benton  at  once,  and  very  properly, 
attacked  this  proceeding.  He  had  a  check 
drawn  for  a  few  days'  compensation  as  senator, 
demanded  payment  in  hard  money,  and  when 
he  was  given  treasury  notes  instead,  made  a 
most  emphatic  protest  in  the  Senate,  which  was 
entirely  effectual,  the  practically  compulsory 
tender  of  the  paper  money  being  forthwith 
stopped. 

It  was  at  this  time,  also,  that  bills  to  subsi 
dize  steamship  lines  wrere  first  passed,  and  that 
the  enlarging  and  abuse  of  the  pension  system 
began,  which  in  our  own  day  threatens  to  be 
come  a  really  crying  evil.  Benton  opposed  both 
sets  of  measures  ;  and  in  regard  to  the  pension 
matter  showed  that  he  would  not  let  himself, 
by  any  specious  plea  of  exceptional  suffering  or 


THR  PRESIDENT  WITHOUT  A  PARTY.      259 

need  for  charity,  be  led  into  vicious  special  legis 
lation,  sure  in  the  end  to  bring  about  the  break, 
ing  down  of  some  of  the  most  important  princi 
ples  of  government. 


CHAPTER  XII. 
BOUNDARY   TROUBLES   WITH  ENGLAND. 

Two  important  controversies  with  foreign 
powers  became  prominent  during  Tyler's  presi 
dency  ;  but  lie  had  little  to  do  with  the  settle 
ment  of  either,  beyond  successively  placing  in 
his  cabinet  the  two  great  statesmen  who  dealt 
with  them.  Webster,  while  secretary  of  state, 
brought  certain  of  the  negotiations  with  Eng 
land  to  a  close  ;  and  later  on,  Calhoun,  while 
holding  the  same  office,  took  up  Webster's  work 
and  also  grappled  with  —  indeed  partly  caused 
—  the  troubles  on  the  Mexican  border,  and 
turned  them  to  the  advantage  of  the  South  and 
slavery. 

Our  boundaries  were  still  very  ill-defined,  ex 
cept  where  they  were  formed  by  the  Gulf  and 
the  Ocean,  the  Great  Lakes,  and  the  river  St. 
John.  Even  in  the  Northeast,  where  huge 
stretches  of  unbroken  forest-land  separated  the 
inhabited  portions  of  Canada  from  those  of  New 
England,  it  was  not  yet  decided  how  much  of 
this  wilderness  belonged  to  us  and  how  much 


BOUNDARY  TROUBLES   W1TI1  ENGLAND.    261 

to  the  Canadians ;  and  in  the  vast,  unsettled 
regions  of  the  far  West  our  claims  came  into 
direct  conflict  with  those  of  Mexico  and  of 
Great  Britain.  The  ownership  of  these  little 
known  and  badly  mapped  regions  could  with 
great  difficulty  be  decided  on  grounds  of  absolute 
and  abstract  right ;  the  title  of  each  contestant 
to  the  land  was  more  or  less  plausible,  and  at  the 
same  time  more  or  less  defective.  The  matter 
was  sure  to  be  decided  in  favor  of  the  strong 
est  ;  and,  say  what  we  will  about  the  justice  and 
right  of  the  various  claims,  the  honest  truth  is, 
that  the  comparative  might  of  the  different  na 
tions,  and  not  the  comparative  righteousness  of 
their  several  causes,  was  the  determining  factor 
in  the  settlement.  Mexico  lost  her  northern 
provinces  by  no  law  of  right,  but  simply  by  the 
law  of  the  longest  sword — the  same  law  that 
gave  India  to  England.  In  both  instances  the 
result  was  greatly  to  the  benefit  of  the  con 
quered  peoples  and  of  every  one  else  ;  though 
there  is  this  wide  difference  between  the  two 
cases  :  that  whereas  the  English  rule  in  India, 
while  it  may  last  for  decades  or  even  for  centu 
ries,  must  eventually  come  to  an  end  and  leave 
little  trace  of  its  existence ;  on  the  other  hand 
our  conquests  from  Mexico  determined  for  all 
time  the  blood,  speech,  and  law  of  the  men  who 
should  fill  the  lands  we  won. 


262  THOMAS   HART  BEN  TON. 

The  questions  between  Great  Britain  and  our 
selves  were  compromised  by  each  side  accept 
ing  about  half  what  it  claimed,  only  because 
neither  was  willing  to  push  the  other  to  extrem- 
ties.  Englishmen  like  Palmerston  might  hector 
and  ruffle,  and  Americans  like  Benton  might 
swagger  and  bully  ;  but  when  it  came  to  be  a 
question  of  actual  fighting  each  people  recog 
nized  the  power  of  the  other,  and  preferred  to 
follow  the  more  cautious  and  peaceful,  not  to 
say  timid,  lead  of  such  statesmen  as  Webster 
and  Lord  Melbourne.  Had  we  been  no  stronger 

O 

than  the  Sikhs,  Oregon  and  Washington  would 
at  present  be  British  possessions ;  and  if  Great 
Britain  had  been  as  weak  as  Mexico,  she  would 
not  now  hold  a  foot  of  territory  on  the  Pacific 
coast.  Either  nation  might  perhaps  have  re 
fused  to  commit  a  gross  and  entirely  unpro 
voked  and  uncalled-for  act  of  aggression  ;  but 
each,  under  altered  conditions,  would  have 
readily  found  excuses  for  showing  much  less  re 
gard  for  the  claims  of  the  other  than  actually 
was  shown.  It  would  be  untrue  to  say  that 
nations  have  not  at  times  proved  themselves 
capable  of  acting  with  great  disinterestedness 
and  generosity  towards  other  peoples ;  but  such 
conduct  is  not  very  common  at  the  best,  and 
although  it  often  may  be  desirable,  it  certainly 
is  not  always  so.  If  the  matter  in  dispute  is 


BOUNDARY  TROUBLES 

of  great  importance,  and  if  there  is  a  doubt  as 
to  which  side  is  right,  then  the  strongest  party 
to  the  controversy  is  pretty  sure  to  give  itself 
the  benefit  of  that  doubt ;  and  international 
morality  will  have  to  take  tremendous  strides 
in  advance  before  this  ceases  to  be  the  case. 

It  is  difficult  to  exaggerate  the  importance  of 
the  treaties  and  wars  by  means  of  which  we 
finally  gave  definite  bounds  to  our  territory  be 
yond  the  Mississippi.  Contemporary  political 
writers  and  students,  of  the  lesser  sort,  are  al 
ways  painfully  deficient  in  the  sense  of  historic 
perspective  ;  and  to  such  the  struggles  for  the 
possession  of  the  unknown  and  dimly  outlined 
western  wastes  seemed  of  small  consequence 
compared  to  similar  European  contests  for  ter 
ritorial  aggrandizement.  Yet,  in  reality,  when 
we  look  at  the  far-reaching  nature  of  the  results, 
the  questions  as  to  what  kingdom  should  receive 
the  fealty  of  Holstein  or  Lorraine,  of  Savoy  cr 
the  Dobrudscha,  seem  of  absolutely  trivial  im 
portance  compared  to  the  infinitely  more  mo 
mentous  ones  as  to  the  future  race  settlement 
and  national  ownership  of  the  then  lonely  and 
unpeopled  lands  of  Texas,  California,  and  Ore 
gon. 

Benton,  greatly  to  the  credit  of  his  foresight, 
and  largely  in  consequence  of  his  strong  nation 
alist  feeling,  thoroughly  appreciated  the  impor- 


264  THOMAS  HART  BE  NT  ON. 

tance  of  our  geographical  extensions.  He  was 
the  great  champion  of  the  West  and  of  western 
development,  and  a  furious  partisan  of  every 
movement  in  the  direction  of  the  enlargement 
of  our  western  boundaries.  Many  of  his  ex 
pressions,  when  talking  of  the  greatness  of  our 
country  and  of  the  magnitude  of  the  interests 
which  were  being  decided,  not  only  were  gran 
diloquent  in  manner,  but  also  seem  exaggerated 
and  overwrought  even  as  regards  matter.  But 
when  we  think  of  the  interests  for  which  he 
contended,  as  they  were  to  become,  and  not  as 
they  at  the  moment  were,  the  appearance  of  ex 
aggeration  is  lost,  and  the  intense  feeling  of  his 
speeches  no  longer  seems  out  of  place  or  dis 
proportionate  to  the  importance  of  the  subject 
with  which  he  dealt.  Without  clearly  formu 
lating  his  opinions,  even  to  himself,  and  while 
sometimes  prone  to  attribute  to  his  country  at 
the  moment  a  greatness  she  was  not  to  possess 
for  two  or  three  generations  to  come,  he,  never 
theless,  had  engrained  in  his  very  marrow  and 
fibre  the  knowledge  that  inevitably,  and  beyond 
all  doubt,  the  coining  years  were  to  be  hers. 
He  knew  that,  while  other  nations  held  the 
past,  and  shared  with  his  own  the  present,  yet 
that  to  her  belonged  the  still  formless  and  un- 
shaped  future.  More  clearly  than  almost  any 
other  statesman  he  beheld  the  grandeur  of  the 


BOUNDARY   TROUBLES   WITH  ENGLAND.     265 

nation  loom  up,  vast  and  shadowy,  through  the 
advancing  years. 

He  was  keenly  alive  to  the  need  of  our  having 
free  chance  to  spread  towards  the  northwest; 
he  very  early  grasped  the  idea  that  in  that  di 
rection  we  ought  to  have  room  for  continental 
development.  In  his  earliest  years,  to  be  sure, 
when  the  Mississippi  seemed  a  river  of  the 
remote  western  border,  when  nobody,  not  even 
the  hardiest  trapper,  had  penetrated  the  bound 
less  and  treeless  plains  that  stretch  to  the  foot 
hills  of  the  Rockies,  and  when  the  boldest 
thinkers  had  not  dared  to  suppose  that  we  could 
ever  hold  together  as  a  people,  when  once  scat 
tered  over  so  wide  a  territory,  he  had  stated  in 
a  public  speech  that  he  considered  the  moun 
tains  to  be  our  natural  frontier  line  to  the  west, 
and  the  barrier  beyond  which  we  ought  not  to 
pass,  and  had  expressed  his  trust  that  on  the 
Pacific  coast  there  would  grow  up  a  kindred 
and  friendly  Republic.  But  very  soon,  as  the 
seemingly  impossible  became  the  actual,  he  him 
self  changed,  and  ever  afterwards  held  that  we 
should  have,  wherever  possible,  no  boundaries 
but  the  two  Oceans. 

Benton's  violent  and  aggressive  patriotism 
undoubtedly  led  him  to  assume  positions  to 
wards  foreign  powers  that  were  very  repugnant 
to  the  quiet,  peacable,  and  order-loving  portion 


2G6  THOMAS   HART  BE  NT  ON. 

of  the  community,  especially  when  lie  gave  vent 
to  the  spirit  of  jealous  antagonism  which  lie  felt 
towards  Great  Britain,  the  power  that  held 
sway  over  the  wilderness  bordering  us  on  the 
north.  Yet  the  arrogant  attitude  he  assumed 
was  more  than  justified  by  the  destiny  of  the 
great  Republic  ;  and  it  would  have  been  well 
for  all  America  if  we  had  insisted  even  more 
than  we  did  upon  the  extension  northward  of 
our  boundaries.  Not  only  the  Columbia  but 
also  the  lied  River  of  the  North  —  and  the  Sas 
katchewan  and  Frazer  as  well  —  should  lie 
wholly  within  our  limits,  less  for  our  own  sake 
than  for  the  sake  of  the  men  who  dwell  along 
their  banks.  Columbia,  Saskatchewan,  and 
Manitoba  would,  as  states  of  the  American 
Union,  hold  positions  incomparably  more  impor 
tant,  grander,  and  more  dignified  than  they  can 
ever  hope  to  reach  either  as  independent  com 
munities  or  as  provincial  dependencies  of  a  for 
eign  power  that  regards  them  with  a  kindly  tol 
erance  somewhat  akin  to  contemptuous  indiffer 
ence.  Of  course  no  one  would  wish  to  see  these, 
or  any  other  settled  communities,  now  added  to 
our  domain  by  force  ;  we  want  no  unwilling  citi 
zens  to  enter  our  Union;  the  time  to  have  taken 
the  lands  was  before  settlers  came  into  them. 
European  nations  war  for  the  possession  of 
thicky  settled  districts  which,  if  conquered,  will 


BOUNDARY  TROUBLES  WITH  ENGLAND.    267 

for  centuries  remain  alien  and  hostile  to  the 
conquerors;  we,  wiser  in  our  generation,  have 
seized  the  waste  solitudes  that  lay  near  us,  the 
limitless  forests  and  never  ending  plains,  and 
the  valleys  of  the  great,  lonely  rivers  ;  and  have 
thrust  our  own  sons  into  them  to  take  posses 
sion  ;  and  a  score  of  years  after  each  conquest 
we  see  the  conquered  land  teeming  with  a  peo 
ple  that  is  one  with  ourselves. 

Benton  felt  that  all  the  unoccupied  land  to 
the  northwest  was  by  right  our  heritage,  and 
he  was  willing  to  do  battle  for  it  if  necessary. 
He  was  a  perfect  type  of  western  American 
statesmanship  in  his  way  of  looking  at  our  for 
eign  relations  ;  he  was  always  unwilling  to  com 
promise,  being  of  that  happy  temperament 
which  is  absolutely  certain  that  its  claims  are 
just  and  righteous  in  their  entirety,  and  that  it 
would  be  wrong  to  accept  anything  less  than 
all  that  is  demanded ;  he  was  willing  to  bully 
if  our  rights,  as  he  deemed  them,  were  not 
granted  us  ;  and  he  was  perfectly  ready  to  fight 
if  the  bullying  was  unsuccessful.  True,  he  did 
nob  consistently  carry  through  all  his  theories 
to  their  logical  consequences  ;  but  it  may  well 
be  questioned  whether,  after  all,  his  original 
attitude  towards  Great  Britain  was  not  wiser, 
looking  to  its  probable  remote  results,  than  that 
which  was  finally  taken  by  the  national  govern- 


268        THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

merit,  whose  policy  \vas  on  tins  point  largely 
shaped  by  the  feeling  among  the  richer  and 
more  educated  classes  of  the  Northeast.  These 
classes  have  always  been  more  cautious  and 
timid  than  any  others  in  the  Union,  especially 
in  their  way  of  looking  at  possible  foreign 
wars,  and  have  never  felt  much  of  the  spirit 
which  made  the  West  stretch  out  impatiently 
for  new  lands.  Fortunately  they  have  rarely 
been  able  to  control  our  territorial  growth. 

No  foot  of  soil  to  which  we  had  any  title  in 
the  Northwest  should  have  been  given  up  ;  we 
were  the  people  who  could  use  it  best,  and  we 
ought  to  have  taken  it  all.  The  prize  was  well 
worth  winning,  and  would  warrant  a  good  deal 
of  risk  being  run.  We  had  even  then  grown 
to  be  so  strong  that  we  were  almost  sure  even 
tually  to  win  in  any  American  contest  for  con 
tinental  supremacy.  We  were  near  by,  our 
foes  far  away  —  for  the  contest  over  the  Co 
lumbia  would  have  been  settled  in  Canada. 
We  should  have  had  hard  fighting  to  be  sure, 

o  O 

but  sooner  or  later  the  result  would  have  been 
in  our  favor.  There  were  no  better  soldiers  in 
the  world  than  the  men  of  Balaclava  and  Inker- 
man,  but  the  victors  of  Buena  Vista  and  Cha- 
pultepecwereas  good.  Scott  and  Taylor  were 
not  great  generals,  but  they  were,  at  least,  the 
equals  of  Lord  Raglan  ;  and  we  did  not  have  in 


BOUNDARY  TROUBLES  WITH  ENGLAND.  269 

our  service  any  smch  examples  of  abnormal  mil 
itary  inaptitude  as  Lords  Lucan  and  Cardigan 
and  their  kind. 

It  was  of  course  to  be  expected  that  men 
like  Benton  would  bitterly  oppose  the  famous 
Ashburton  treaty,  which  was  Webster's  crown 
ing  work  while  secretary  of  state,  and  the  only 
conspicuous  success  of  Tyler's  administration. 
The  Ashburton  treaty  was  essentially  a  compro 
mise  between  the  extreme  claims  of  the  two 
contestants,  as  was  natural  where  the  claims 
were  based  on  very  unsubstantial  grounds  and 
the  contestants  were  of  somewhat  the  same 
strength.  It  was  most  beneficial  in  its  immedi 
ate  effects  ;  and  that  it  was  a  perfectly  dignified 
and  proper  treaty  for  America  to  make  is  best 
proved  by  the  virulent  hostility  with  which 
Palmerston  and  his  followers  assailed  it  as  a 
"  surrender "  on  the  part  of  England,  \vhile 
Englishmen  of  the  same  stamp  are  to  this  day 
never  tired  :of  lamenting  the  fact  that  they  have 
allowed  our  western  boundaries  to  be  pushed 
so  far  to  the  north.  But  there  appears  to.be 
much  excuse  for  Benton's  attitude,  when  we 
look  at  the  treaty  as  one  in  a  chain  of  incidents, 
and  with  regard  to  its  future  results.  Our  ter 
ritorial  quarrels  with  Great  Britain  were  not 
like  those  between  most  other  powers.  It 
was  for  the  interest  of  the  whole  western  herni- 


270  THOMAS  HART  BEN  TON. 

sphere  that  no  European  na^on  should  have 
extensive  possessions  between  the  Atlantic  and 
the  Pacific;  and  by  right  we  should  have  given 
ourselves  the  benefit  of  every  doubt  in  all 
territorial  questions,  and  have  shown  ourselves 
ready  to  make  prompt  appeal  to  the  sword 
whenever  it  became  necessary  as  a  last  resort. 

Still,  as  regards  the  Ashburton  treaty  itself, 
it  must  be  admitted  that  much  of  Benton's 
opposition  was  merely  factious  and  partisan, 
on  account  of  its  being  a  Whig  measure;  and 
his  speeches  on  the  subject  contain  ti  number 
of  arguments  that  are  not  very  creditable  to 
him. 

Some  of  his  remarks  referred  to  a  matter 
which  had  been  already  a  cause  of  great  excite 
ment  during  Van  Buren's  administration,  and 
on  which  he  had  spoken  more  than  once.  This 
was  the  destruction  of  the  steamer  Caroline  by 
the  British  during  the  abortive  Canadian  insur 
rection  of  1837.  Much  sympathy  had  been 
felt  for  the  rebels  by  the  Americans  along  the 
border,  and  some  of  them  had  employe^  the 
Caroline  in  conveying  stores  to  the  insurgents ; 
and  in  revenge  a  party  of  British  troops  sur 
prised  and  destroyed  her  one  night  while  she 
was  lying  in  an  American  port.  This  was  a 
gross  and  flagrant  violation  of  our  rights,  and 
was  promptly  resented  by  Van  Buren,  who  had 


BOUNDARY  TROUBLES   WITH  ENGLAND.    271 

done  what  he  could  to  maintain  order  along  the 
border,  and  had  been  successful  in  his  efforts. 
Benton  had  supported  the  president  in  pre 
venting  a  breach  of  neutrality  on  our  part,  and 
was  fiercely  indignant  when  the  breach  was 
committed  by  the  other  side.  Reparation  was 
demanded  forthwith.  The  British  government 
at  first  made  evasive  replies.  After  a  while  a 
very  foolish  personage  named  McLeod,  a  Brit 
ish  subject,  who  boasted  that  he  had  taken  part 
in  the  affair,  ventured  into  New  York  and  was 
promptly  imprisoned  by  the  state  authorities. 
His  boastings,  fortunately  for  him,  proved  to  be 
totally  unfounded,  and  he  was  acquitted  by  the 
jury  before  whom  he  was  taken,  after  a  deten 
tion  of  several  months  in  prison.  But  mean 
while  the  British  government  demanded  his 
release  —  adopting  a  very  different  tone  with 
Tyler  and  the  Whigs  from  that  which  they  had 
been  using  towards  Van  Buren,  who  still  could 
conjure  with  Jackson's  terrible  name.  The 
United  States  agreed  to  release  McLeod,  but 
New  York  refused  to  deliver  him  up  ;  and  be 
fore  the  question  was  decided  he  was  acquitted, 
as  said  above.  It  was  clearly  wrong  for  a  state 
to  interfere  in  a  disagreement  between  the  na 
tion  and  a  foreign  power  ;  and  on  the  other 
hand  the  federal  authorities  did  not  show  as 
much  firmness  in  their  dealings  with  England 


272        THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

as  they  should  have  shown.  Benton,  true  to 
certain  of  his  states-rights  theories  ;md  in  pur 
suance  of  his  policy  of  antagonism  to  Great 
Britain,  warmly  supported  the  attitude  of  New 
York,  alleging  that  the  United  States  had  no 
right  to  interfere  with  her  disposal  of  Mc- 
Leod ;  and  asserting  that  while  if  the  citizens 
of  one  country  committed  an  outrage  upon  an 
other  it  was  necessary  to  apply  to  the  sover 
eign  for  redress,  yet  that  if  the  wrong-doers 
came  into  the  country  which  had  been  aggrieved 
they  might  be  seized  and  punished  ;  and  he 
exultingly  referred  to  Jackson's  conduct  at  the 
time  of  the  first  Seminole  War,  when  he  hung 
off-hand  two  British  subjects  whom  he  accused 
of  inciting  the  Indians  against  us,  Great  Britain 
not  making  any  protest.  The  Caroline  matter 
was  finally  settled  in  the  Ashburton  treaty,  the 
British  making  a  formal  but  very  guarded  apol 
ogy  for  her  destruction,  —  an  apology  which  did 
not  satisfy  Benton  in  the  least. 

It  is  little  to  Ben  ton's  credit,  however,  that, 
while  thus  courting  foreign  wars,  he  yet  opposed 
the  efforts  of  the  Whigs  to  give  us  a  better 
navy.  Our  navy  was  then  good  of  its  kind,  but 
altogether  too  small.  Benton's  opposition  to  its 
increase  seems  to  have  proceeded  partly  from 
mere  bitter  partisanship,  partly  from  sheer  ig 
norance,  and  partly  from  the  doctrinaire  dread 


BOUNDARY  TROUBLES  WITH  ENGLAND.    273 

of  any  kind  of  standing  military  or  naval  force, 
which  he  had  inherited,  with  a  good  many  simi 
lar  ideas,  from  the  Jeffersonians. 

He  attacked  the  whole  treaty,  article  by  arti 
cle,  when  it  came  up  for  ratification  in  the  Sen 
ate,  making  an  extremely  lengthy  and  elab 
orate  speech,  or  rather  set  of  speeches,  against 
it.  Much  of  his  objection,  especially  to  the 
part  compromising  the  territorial  claims  of  the 
two  governments,  was  well  founded  ;  but  much 
was  also  factions  and  groundless.  The  most 
important  point  of  all  that  was  in  controversy, 
the  ownership  of  Oregon,  was  left  unsettled ; 
but,  as  will  be  shown  farther  on,  this  was  wise. 
He  made  this  omission  a  base  or  pretext  for  the 
charge  that  the  treaty  was  gotten  up  in  the 
interests  of  the  East,  —  although  with  frank 
lack  of  logic  he  also  opposed  it  because  it  sac 
rificed  the  interests  of  Maine,  — and  that  it  was 
detrimental  to  the  South  and  West ;  and  he  did 
his  best  to  excite  sectional  feeling  against  it. 
He  also  protested  against  the  omission  of  all 
reference  to  the  impressment  of  American  sail 
ors  by  British  vessels  ;  and  this  was  a  valid 
ground  of  opposition,  —  although  Webster  had 
really  settled  the  matter  by  writing  a  formal 
note  to  the  British  government,  in  which  he 
practically  gave  official  notice  that  any  attempt 
to  revive  the  practice  would  be  repelled  by  force 
of  arm  a, 


274        THOMAS  HART  BENTON, 

Benton  occupied  a  much  less  tenable  position 
when  he  came  to  the  question  of  slavery,  and 
inveighed  against  the  treaty  because  it  did  not 
provide  for  the  return  of  fugitive  slaves,  or  of 
slaves  taken  from  American  coasting  vessels 
when  the  latter  happened  to  be  obliged  to  put 
into  West  Indian  ports,  and  because  it  did  con 
tain  a  provision  that  we  ourselves  should  keep 
in  commission  a  squadron  on  the  coast  of  Africa 
to  cooperate  with  the  British  in  the  suppression 
of  the  slave-trade.  Benton's  object  in  attack 
ing  the  treaty  on  this  point  was  to  excite  the 
South  to  a  degree  that  would  make  the  senators 
from  that  section  refuse  to  join  in  ratifying  it ; 
but  the  attempt  was  a  flat  failure.  It  is  hardly 
to  be  supposed  that  he  himself  was  as  indignant 
over  this  question  as  he  pretended  to  be.  He 
must  have  realized  that,  so  long  as  we  had  among 
ourselves  an  institution  so  wholly  barbarous 
and  out  of  date  as  slavery,  just  so  long  we 
should  have  to  expect  foreign  powers  to  treat  us 
rather  cavalierly  on  that  one  point.  Whatever 
we  might  say  among  ourselves  as  to  the  rights 
of  property  or  the  necessity  of  preserving  the 
Union  by  refraining  from  the  disturbance  of 
slavery,  it  was  certain  that  foreign  nations 
would  place  the  manhood  and  liberty  of  the 
slave  above  the  vested  interest  of  the  master  — 
all  the  more  readily  because  they  were  jealous 


BOUNDARY  TROUBLES  WITH  ENGLAND.    275 

of  the  Union  and  anxious  to  see  it  break  up, 
and  were  naturally  delighted  to  take  the  side  of 
abstract  justice  and  humanity,  when  to  do  so 
was  at  the  expense  of  outsiders  and  redounded 
to  their  own  credit,  without  causing  them  the 
least  pecuniary  loss  or  personal  inconvenience. 
The  attitude  of  slave-holders  towards  freedom 
in  the  abstract  was  grotesque  in  its  lack  of  logic ; 
but  the  attitude  of  many  other  classes  of  men, 
both  abroad  and  at  home,  towards  it  was  equally 
full  of  a  grimly  unconscious  humor.  The  south 
ern  planters,  who  loudly  sympathized  with  Kos- 
suth  and  the  Hungarians,  were  entirely  uncon 
scious  that  their  tyranny  over  their  own  black 
bondsmen  made  their  attacks  upon  Austria's 
despotism  absurd ;  and  Germans,  who  were 
shocked  at  our  holding  the  blacks  in  slavery, 
could  not  think  of  freedom  in  their  own  country 
without  a  shudder.  On  one  night  the  Demo 
crats  of  the  Northern  States  would  hold  a  mass 
meeting  to  further  the  cause  of  Irish  freedom, 
on  the  next  night  the  same  men  would  break 
up  another  meeting  held  to  help  along  the  free 
ing  of  the  negroes ;  while  the  English  aristoc 
racy  held  up  its  hands  in  horror  at  American 
slavery  and  set  its  face  like  a  flint  against  all 
efforts  to  do  Ireland  tardy  and  incomplete  jus 
tice. 

Again,  in  his  opposition   to  the  extradition 


276         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

clause  of  the  treaty,  Benton  was  certainly 
wrong.  Nothing  is  clearer  than  that  nations 
ought  to  combine  to  prevent  criminals  from 
escaping  punishment  merely  by  fleeing  over  an 
imaginary  line  ;  the  crime  is  against  all  society, 
and  society  should  unite  to  punish  it.  Espe 
cially  is  there  need  of  the  most  stringent  ex 
tradition  laws  between  countries  whose  people 
have  the  same  speech  and  legal  system,  as  with 
the  United  States  and  Great  Britain.  Indeed, 
it  is  a  pity  that  our  extradition  laws  are  not 
more  stringent.  But  Benton  saw,  or  affected 
to  see,  in  the  extradition  clause,  a  menace  to 
political  refugees,  and  based  his  opposition  to  it 
mainly  on  this  ground.  He  also  quoted  on  his 
side  the  inevitable  Jefferson ;  for  Jefferson,  or 
rather  the  highly  idealized  conception  of  what 
Jefferson  had  been,  shared  with  the  "demos 
krateo  principle  "  the  honor  of  being  one  of 
the  twin  fetiches  to  which  Benton,  in  common 
with  most  of  his  fellow-Democrats,  especially 
delighted  to  bow  down. 

But  when  he  came  to  the  parts  of  the  treaty 
that  defined  our  northeastern  boundary  and  so 
much  of  our  northwestern  boundary  as  lay  near 
the  Great  Lakes,  Benton  occupied  far  more 
defensible  ground;  and  the  parts  of  his  speech 
referring  to  these  questions  were  very  strong  in 
deed.  He  attempted  to  show  that  in  the  matter 


BOUNDARY  TROUBLES  WITH  ENGLAND.     277 

of  the  Maine  frontier  we  had  surrendered  very 
much  more  than  there  was  any  need  of  pur  do 
ing,  and  that  the  British  claim  was  unfounded; 
and  there  seems  now  to  be  good  reason  for 
thinking  him  right,  although  it  must  be  ad 
mitted  that  in  agreeing  to  the  original  line  in 
earlier  treaties  the  British  had  acted  entirely 
under  a  misapprehension  as  to  where  it  would 
go.  Ben  ton  was  also  able  to  make  a  good 
point  against  Webster  for  finally  agreeing  to 
surrender  so  much  of  Maine's  claim  by  showing 
the  opposition  the  latter  had  made,  while  in  the 
Senate,  to  a  similar  but  less  objectionable  clause 
in  a  treaty  which  Jackson's  administration  had 
then  been  trying  to  get  through.  Again  Web 
ster  had,  in  defending  the  surrender  of  certain 
of  our  claims  along  the  boundary  west  of  Lake 
Superior,  stated  that  the  country  was  not  very 
valuable,  as  it  was  useless  for  agricultural  pur 
poses  ;  and  Benton  had  taken  him  up  sharply 
on  this  point,  saying  that  we  wanted  the  land 
anyhow,  whether  it  produced  corn  and  potatoes 
or  only  furs  and  lumber.  The  amounts  of  ter 
ritory  as  to  which  our  claims  were  compromised 
were  not  very  large  compared  to  the  extent  of 
the  Pacific  coast  lands  which  were  still  left  in 
dispute  ;  and  it  was  perhaps  well  that  the 
treaty  was  ratified  ;  but  certainly  there  is  much 
to  be  said  on  Benton's  side  so  far  as  his  opposi 
tion  to  the  proposed  frontier  was  concerned. 


278  T IIO M AS  HART  BEN  TON. 

However,  he  was  only  able  to  rally  eight 
other  ^enators  to  his  support,  and  the  treaty 
went  through  the  Senate  triumphantly.  It  en 
countered  an  even  more  bitter  opposition  in 
Parliament,  where  Palmerston  headed  a  series 
of  furious  attacks  upon  it,  for  reasons  the  pre 
cise  opposite  of  those  which  Benton  alleged, 
arguing  that  England  received  much  less,  in 
stead  of  much  more,  than  her  due,  and  thereby 
showing  Webster's  position  in  a  very  much 
better  light  than  that  in  which  it  would  other 
wise  have  appeared.  Eventually  the  British 
government  ratified  the  treaty. 

The  Ashburton  treaty  did  not  touch  on  the 
Oregon  matter  at  all  ;  nor  was  this  dealt  with 
by  Webster  while  he  was  secretary  of  state. 
But  it  came  before  the  Senate  at  that  time, 
and  later  on  Calhoun  took  it  up,  when  filling 
Webster's  place  in  the  cabinet,  although  a  final 
decision  was  not  reached  until  during  Folk's 
presidency.  Webster  did  not  appreciate  the 
importance  of  Oregon  in  the  least,  and  more 
over  came  from  a  section  of  the  country  that 
was  not  inclined  to  insist  on  territorial  expan 
sion  at  the  hazard  of  a  war,  in  which  the  mer 
chants  of  the  sea-board  would  be  the  chief  suf 
ferers.  Calhoun,  it  is  true,  came  from  a  pecu 
liarly  militant  and  bellicose  state,  but  on  the 
other  hand  from  a  section  that  was  not  very 


BOUNDARY  TROUBLES  WITH  ENGLAND.    279 

anxious  to  see  the  free  North  acquire  new  terri 
tory.  So  it  happened  that  neither  of  Tyler's 
two  great  secretaries  felt  called  upon  to  insist 
too  vehemently  upon  going  to  extremes  in  de 
fense  of  our  rights,  or  supposed  rights,  along 
the  Pacific  coast ;  and  though  in  the  end  the 
balance  was  struck  pretty  evenly  between  our 
claims  and  those  of  our  neighbor,  yet  it  is  to  be 
regretted  that  we  did  not  stand  out  stiffly  for 
the  whole  of  our  demand.  Our  title  was  cer 
tainly  not  perfect,  but  it  was  to  the  full  as  good 
as,  or  better  than,  Great  Britain's;  and  it  would 
have  been  better  in  the  end  had  we  insisted 
upon  the  whole  territory  being  given  to  us,  no 
matter  what  price  we  had  to  pay. 

The  politico-social  line  of  division  between 
the  East  and  the  West  had  been  gradually 
growing  fainter  as  that  between  the  North 
and  South  grew  deeper ;  but  on  the  Oregon 
question  it  again  became  prominent.  South 
eastern  Democrats,  like  the  Carolinian  McDuf- 
fie,  spoke  as  slightingly  of  the  value  of  Oregon, 
and  were  as  little  inclined  to  risk  a  war  for  its 
possession,  as  the  most  peace-loving  Whigs  of 
New  England;  while  the  intense  western  feel 
ing  against  giving  up  any  of  our  rights  on  the 
Pacific  coast  was  best  expressed  by  the  two 
senators  from  the  slave  state  of  Missouri.  Ben- 
ton  was  not  restrained  in  his  desire  to  add  to 


280  THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

the  might  of  the  Union  by  any  fear  of  the  pos 
sible  future  effect  upon  the  political  power  c  f 
the  Slave  States.  Although  a  slave-holder  and 
the  representative  of  slave-holders,  he  was  fully 
alive  to  the  evils  of  slavery,  though  as  yet  nob 
seeing  clearly  how  all-important  a  question  it 
had  become.  The  preservation  and  extension  of 
the  Union  and  obedience  to  the  spirit  of  De 
mocracy  were  the  chief  articles  of  his  political 
'creed,  and  to  these  he  always  subordinated  all 
others.  When,  in  speaking  of  slavery,  he  mado 
use,  as  he  sometimes  did,  of  expressions  tha  , 
were  not  far  removed  from  those  of  men  really 
devoted  to  the  slave  interests,  it  was  almost, 
always  because  he  had  some  ulterior  object  iii 
view,  or  for  factional  ends;  for  unfortunately 
his  standard  of  political  propriety  was  not  suf 
ficiently  high  to  prevent  his  trying  to  make 
use  of  any  weapon,  good  or  bad,  with  which  fo 
overturn  his  political  foes.  In  protesting  against 
the  Ashburton  treaty,  he  outdid  even  such  slav 
ery  champions  as  Calhoun  in  the  extravagance 
of  his  ideas  as  to  what  we  should  demand  of 
foreign  powers  in  reference  to  their  treatment 
of  our  "peculiar  institution;"  but  he  seems 
to  have  done  this  merely  because  thereby  he 
got  an  additional  handle  of  attack  against  the 
Whig  measures.  The  same  thing  was  true 
earlier  of  his  fulmination  against  Clay's  pro- 


BOUNDARY   TROUBLES  WITH  ENGLAND.    281 

posed  Panama  Congress  ;  and  even  before  that, 
in  attacking  Adams  for  his  supposed  part  in  the 
treaty  whereby  we  established  the  line  of  our 
Spanish  frontier,  he  dragged  slavery  into  the 
question,  not,  apparently,  because  he  really  par 
ticularly  wished  to  see  our  slave  territory  ex 
tended,  but  because  he  thought  that  he  might 
use  the  slavery  cry  to  excite  in  one  other  section 
of  the  country  a  feeling  as  strong  as  that  which 
the  West  already  felt  in  regard  to  territorial 
expansion  generally.  Indeed,  his  whole  conduct 
throughout  the  Oregon  controversy,  especially 
when  taken  in  connection  with  the  fact  that 
he  stood  out  for  Maine's  frontier  rights  more 
stoutly  than  the  Maine  representatives  them 
selves,  shows  how  free  from  sectional  bias  was 
his  way  of  looking  at  our  geographical  growth. 
The  territory  along  the  Pacific  coast  lying 
between  California  on  the  south  and  Alaska  on 
the  north  —  "  Oregon,"  as  it  was  comprehen 
sively  called — had  been  a  source  of  dispute 
for  some  time  between  the  United  States  and 
Great  Britain.  After  some  negotiations  both 
had  agreed  with  Russia  to  recognize  the  line  of 
54°  40;  as  the  southern  boundary  of  the  latter's 
possessions ;  and  Mexico's  undisputed  posses 
sion  of  California  gave  an  equally  well  marked 
southern  limit,  at  the  forty  -  second  parallel. 
All  between  was  in  dispute.  The  British  had 


282        THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

trading  posts  at  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia, 
which  they  emphatically  asserted  to  be  theirs  •. 
we,  on  the  other  hand,  claimed  an  absolutely 
clear  title  up  to  the  forty  -  ninth  parallel,  a 
couple  of  hundred  miles  north  of  the  mouth  oi 
the  Columbia,  and  asserted  that  for  all  the  bal 
ance  of  the  territory  up  to  the  Russian  posses 
sions  our  title  was  at  any  rate  better  than  that 
of  the  British.  In  1818  a  treaty  had  been  made 
providing  for  the  joint  occupation  of  the  terri 
tory  by  the  two  powers,  as  neither  was  willing 
to  give  up  its  claim  to  the  whole,  or  at  the  time 
at  all  understood  the  value  of  the  possession. 
then  entirely  unpeopled.  This  treaty  of  joint 
occupancy  had  remained  in  force  ever  since. 
Under  it  the  British  had  built  great  trading 
stations,  and  used  the  whole  country  in  the  in 
terests  of  certain  fur  companies.  The  Amer 
icans,  in  spite  of  some  vain  efforts,  wrere  unable 
to  compete  with  them  in  this  line  ;  but,  what 
was  infinitely  more  important,  had  begun,  even 
prior  to  1840,  to  establish  actual  settlers  along 
the  banks  of  the  rivers,  some  missionaries  be 
ing  the  first  to  come  in.  As  long,  however,  as 
the  territory  remained  sparsely  settled,  and  the 
communication  with  it  chiefly  by  sea,  the  hold 
of  Great  Britain  gave  promise  of  being  the 
stronger.  But  the  aspect  of  affairs  was  totally 
changed  when  in  1842  a  huge  caravan  of  over 


BOUNDARY  TROUBLES   WITH  EXGLAXD.     283 

a  thousand  Americans  made  the  journey  over 
land  from  the  frontiers  of  Missouri,  taking  with 
them  their  wives  and  their  children,  their  flocks 
and  herds,  carrying  their  long  rifles  on  their 
shoulders,  and  their  axes  and  spades  in  the  great 
canvas  -  topped  wagons.  The  next  year,  two 
thousand  more  settlers  of  the  same  sort  in  their 
turn  crossed  the  vast  plains,  wound  their  way 
among  the  Rocky  Mountains  through  the  pass 
explored  by  Fremont,  Benton's  son-in-law,  and 
after  suffering  every  kind  of  hardship  and  dan 
ger,  and  warding  off  the  attacks  of  hostile 
Indians,  descended  the  western  slope  of  the 
great  water-shed  to  join  their  fellows  by  the 
banks  of  the  Columbia.  When  American  set 
tlers  were  once  in  actual  possession  of  the  dis 
puted  territory,  it  became  evident  that  the 
period  of  Great  Britain's  undisputed  sway  was 
over. 

The  government  of  the  United  States,  mean 
while,  was  so  far  from  helping  these  settlers 
that  it  on  the  contrary  rather  threw  obstacles  in 
their  way.  As  usual  with  us,  the  individual  ac 
tivity  of  the  citizens  themselves,  who  all  acted 
independently  and  with  that  peculiar  self-reli 
ance  that  is  the  chief  American  characteristic, 
outstripped  the  activity  of  their  representatives, 
who  were  obliged  all  to  act  together,  and  who 
were  therefore  held  back  by  each  other,  —  our 


284         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

Constitution,  while  giving  free  scope  for  individ 
ual  freedom,  wisely  providing  such  checks  as  to 
make  our  governmental  system  eminently  con 
servative  in  its  workings.  Tyler's  administra 
tion  did  not  wish  to  embroil  itself  with  Eng 
land  ;  so  it  refused  any  aid  to  the  settlers,  and 
declined  to  give  them  grants  of  land,  as  under 
the  joint  occupancy  treaty  that  would  have 
given  England  offense  and  cause  for  complaint. 
But  Benton  and  the  other  Westerners  were 
perfectly  willing  to  offend  England,  if  by  so  do 
ing  they  could  help  America  to  obtain  Oregon, 
and  were  too  rash  and  headstrong  to  count  the 
cost  of  their  actions.  Accordingly,  a  bill  was 
introduced  providing  for  the  settlement  of  Ore 
gon,  and  giving  each  settler  six  hundred  and 
forty  acres,  and  additional  land  if  he  had  a  fam 
ily  ;  so  that  every  inducement  was  held  out  to 
the  emigrants,  the  West  wanting  to  protect  and 
encourage  them  by  all  the  means  in  its  power. 
The  laws  and  jurisdiction  of  the  Territory  of 
Iowa  were  to  be  extended  to  all  the  settlers  on 
the  Pacific  coast,  who  hitherto  had  governed 
themselves  merely  by  a  system  of  mutual  agree 
ments. 

The  bill  was,  of  course,  strongly  opposed,  es 
pecially  on  account  of  the  clause  giving  land  to 
the  settlers.  It  passed  the  Senate  by  a  close 
vote,  but  failed  in  the  House.  Naturally  Ben- 


BOUNDARY  TROUBLES  WITH  ENGLAND.    285 

ton  was  one  of  its  chief  supporters,  and  spoke  at 
length  in  its  favor.  He  seized  the  kernel  of  the 
matter  when,  in  advocating  the  granting  of  land, 
he  spoke  of  immigration  as  4t  the  only  thing 
which  can  save  the  country  from  the  British, 
acting  through  their  powerful  agent,  the  Hud 
son's  Bay  Company."  He  then  blew  a  lusty 
note  of  defiance  to  Great  Britain  herself  :  — 

I  think  she  will  take  offense,  do  what  we  may  in 
relation  to  this  territory.  She  wants  it  herself,  and 
means  to  quarrel  for  it,  if  she  does  not  fight  for  it. 
...  I  grant  that  she  will  take  offense,  but  that  is 
not  the  question  with  me.  Has  she  a  rigid  to  take 
offense  ?  That  is  my  question  !  And  this  being  de 
cided  in  the  negative,  I  neither  fear  nor  calculate  con 
sequences.  .  .  .  Courage  will  keep  her  off,  fear  will 
bring  her  upon  us.  The  assertion  of  our  rights  will 
command  her  respect ;  the  fear  to  assert  them  will 
bring  us  her  contempt.  .  .  .  Neither  nations  nor  in 
dividuals  ever  escaped  danger  by  fearing  it.  They 
must  face  it  and  defy  it.  An  abandonment  of  a  right 
for  fear  of  bringing  on  an  attack,  instead  of  keeping 
it  off,  will  inevitably  bring  on  the  outrage  that  is 
dreaded. 

He  was  right  enough  in  his  disposition  to  re 
sent  the  hectoring  spirit  which,  at  that  time, 
characterized  Great  Britain's  foreign  policy ; 
but  he  was  all  wrong  in  condemning  delay,  and 
stating  that  if  things  were  left  as  they  were 
time  would  work  against  us,  and  not  for  us. 


286         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

Iii  this  respect  Calhoun,  who  opposed  the  bill, 
was  much  wiser.  He  advocated  a  policy  of 
"  masterly  inactivity,"  foreseeing  that  time  was 
everything  to  us,  inasmuch  as  the  land  was  sure 
in  the  end  to  belong  to  that  nation  whose  peo 
ple  had  settled  in  it,  and  we  alone  were  able  to 
furnish  a  constantly  increasing  stream  of  immi 
grants.  Later  on,  however,  Calhoun  abandoned 
this  policy,  proba,bly  mainly  influenced  by  fear 
of  the  extension  of  free  territory,  and  consented 
to  a  compromise  with  Great  Britain.  The  true 
course  to  have  pursued  would  have  been  to  have 
combined  the  ideas  of  both  Benton  and  Calhoun, 
and  to  have  gone  farther  than  either ;  that  is,  we 
should  have  allowed  the  question  to  remain  un 
settled  as  long  as  was  possible,  because  every 
year  saw  an  increasing  American  population  in 
the  coveted  lands,  and  rendered  the  ultimate 
decision  surer  to  be  for  us.  When  it  was  im 
possible  to  postpone  the  question  longer,  we 
should  have  insisted  upon  its  being  settled 
entirely  in  our  favor,  no  matter  at  what  cost. 
The  unsuccessful  attempts,  made  by  Benton  and 
his  supporters,  to  persuade  the  Senate  to  pass  a 
resolution,  requiring  that  notice  of  the  termina 
tion  of  the  joint  occupancy  treaty  should  forth 
with  be  given,  were  certainly  ill-advised. 

However,  even  Benton  was  not  willing  to  go 
to  the  length  to  which  certain  Western  men 


BOUNDARY  TROUBLES  WITH  ENGLAND.     287 

went,  who  insisted  upon  all  or  nothing.  He  had 
become  alarmed  and  angry  over  the  intrigue  for 
the  "ad mission  of  Texas  and  the  proposed  for 
cible  taking  away  of  Mexican  territory.  The 
Northwestern  Democrats  wanted  all  Texas  and 
all  Oregon  ;  the  Southeastern  ones  wished  all 
the  former  and  part  of  the  latter.  Benton 
then  concluded  that  it  would  be  best  to  take 
part  of  each  ;  for,  although  no  friend  to  compro 
mises,  yet  he  was  unwilling  to  jeopardize  the 
safety  of  the  Union  as  it  was  by  seeking  to  make 
it  still  larger.  Accordingly,  he  sympathized 
with  the  effort  made  by  Calhoun  while  secretary 
of  state  to  get  the  British  to  accept  the  line  of 
49°  as  the  frontier  ;  but  the  British  government 
then  rejected  this  proposition.  In  1844  the 
Democrats  made  their  campaign  upon  the  issue 
of  "fifty-four  forty  or  fight;"  and  Polk,  when, 
elected,  felt  obliged  to  insist  upon  this  campaign 
boundary.  To  this,  however,  Great  Britain  nat 
urally  would  not  consent  ;  it  was,  indeed,  idle 
to  expect  her  to  do  so,  unless  things  should  be 
kept  as  they  were  until  a  fairly  large  American 
population  had  grown  up  along  the  Pacific  coast, 
arid  had  thus  put  her  in  a  position  where  she 
could  hardly  do  anything  else.  Folk's  admin 
istration  was  neither  capable  nor  warlike,  how 
ever  well  disposed  to  bluster  ;  and  the  secretary 
of  state,  the  timid,  shifty,  and  selfish  politician, 


288  THOMAS  HART  RE  NT  ON. 

Buchanan,  naturally  fond  of  facing  both  ways, 
was  the  last  man  to  wish  to  force  a  .quarrel  on  a 
high-spirited  and  determined  antagonist  like 
England.  Accordingly,  he  made  up  his  mind 
to  back  down  and  try  for  the  line  of  49°,  as  pro 
posed  by  Calhoun,  when  in  Tyler's  cabinet ;  and- 
the  English,  for  all  their  affected  indifference, 
had  been  so  much  impressed  by  the  warlike 
demonstrations  in  the  United  States,  that  they 
in  turn  were  delighted,  singing  in  a  much  lower 
key  than  before  the  "  fifty-four  forty  "  cry  had 
been  raised  ;  accordingly  they  withdrew  their 
former  pretensions  to  the  Columbia  River  and 
accepted  the  offered  compromise.  Now,  how 
ever,  came  the  question  of  getting  the  treaty 
through  the  Senate ;  and  Buchanan  sounded 
Benton,  to  see  if  he  would  undertake  this  task. 
Benton,  worried  over  the  Texas  matter,  was 
willing  to  recede  somewhat  from  the  very  high 
ground  he  had  taken, —  although,  of  course,  he 
insisted  that  he  had  been  perfectly  consistent 
throughout,  and  that  the  49th  parallel  was  the 
line  he  had  all  along  been  striving  for.  Under 
his  lead  the  proposal  for  a  treaty  on  the  basis 
indicated  was  carried  through  the  Senate,  and 
the  line  in  consequence  ultimately  became  our 
frontier,  in  spite  of  the  frantic  opposition  of 
the  Northwestern  Democrats,  the  latter  hurling 
every  sort  of  charge  of  bad  faith  and  treachery 


BOUNDARY  TROUBLES   WITH  ENGLAND.     289 

at  their  Southern  associates,  who  had  joined  with 
the  Whigs  in  defeating  them.  Benton's  speech 
in  support  of  the  proposal  was  pitched  much 
lower  than  had  been  his  previous  ones  ;  and,  a 
little  forgetful  of  some  of  his  own  remarks,  he 
was  especially  severe  upon  these  members  who 
denounced  England  and  held  up  a  picture  of  her 
real  or  supposed  designs  to  excite  and  frighten 
the  people  into  needless  opposition  to  her. 

In  its  immediate  effects  the  adoption  of  the 
49th  parallel  as  the  dividing  line  between  the 
two  countries  was  excellent,  and  entailed  no  loss 
of  dignity  on  either.  Yet,  as  there  was  no  par 
ticular  reason  why  we  should  show  any  gener 
osity  in  our  diplomatic  dealings  with  England, 
it  may  well  be  questioned  whether  it  would  not 
have  been  better  to  have  left  things  as  they  were 
until  we  could  have  taken  all.  Wars  are,  of 
course,  as  a  rule  to  be  avoided ;  but  they  are 
far  better  than  certain  kinds  of  peace.  Every 
war  in  which  we  have  been  engaged,  except 
the  one  with  Mexico,  has  been  justifiable  in  its 
origin  ;  and  each  one,  without  any  exception 
whatever,  has  left  us  better  off,  taking  both 
moral  and  material  considerations  into  account, 
than  we  should  have  been  if  we  had  not  waged 
it. 

19 


CHAPTER   XIII. 

THE  ABOLITIONISTS  DANCE   TO  THE  SLAVE 

BARONS'  PIPING. 

IN  1844  the  Whig  candidate  for  the  Presi 
dency,  Henry  Clay,  was  defeated  by  ::  Mr.  Polk, 
the  nominee  of  the  Democracy.  The  majorities 
in  several  of  the  states  were  very  small ;  this 
was  the  case,  for  example  in  New  York,  the 
change  in  whose  electoral  vote  would  have  also 
changed  the  entire  result. 

Up  to  1860  there  were  very  few  political  con 
tests  in  which  the  dividing  lines  between  right 
and  wrong  so  nearly  coincided  with  those  drawn 
between  the  two  opposing  parties  as  in  that  of 
1844.  The  Democrats  favored  the  annexation  of 
Texas,  and  the  addition  of  new  slave  territory  to 
the  Union  ;  the  Whigs  did  not.  Almost  every 
good  element  in  the  country  stood  behind  Clay  ; 
the  vast  majority  of  intelligent,  high-minded, 
upright  men  supported  him.  Polk  was  backed 
by  rabid  Southern  fire -eaters  and  slavery  exten- 
sionists,  who  had  deified  negro  bondage  and  ex 
alted  it  beyond  the  Union,  the  Constitution,  and 


ABOLITIONISTS  AND  SLAVE  BARONS.      291 

gjelse  ;  by  the  almost  solid  foreign 
vote,  still  unfit  for  the  duties  of  American 
citizenship ;  by  the  vicious  and  criminal  classes 
in  all  the  orreat  cities  of  the  North  and  in  New 

o 

Orleans  ;  by  the  corrupt  politicians,  who  found 
ignorance  and  viciousness  tools  ready  forged  to 
their  hands,  wherewith  to  perpetrate  the  gi 
gantic  frauds  without  which  the  election  would 
have  been  lost ;  and,  lastly,  he  was  also  backed 
indirectly  but  most  powerfully  by  the  political 
Abolitionists. 

These  Abolitionists  had  formed  themselves 
into  the  Liberty  party,  and  ran  Birney  for 
president ;  and  though  they  polled  but  little 
over  sixty  thousand  votes,  yet  as  these  were 
drawn  almost  entirely  from  the  ranks  of  Clay's 
supporters,  they  were  primarily  responsible  for 
his  defeat ;  for  the  defections  were  sufficiently 
large  to  turn  the  scale  in  certain  pivotal  and 
closely  contested  states,  notably  New  York. 
Their  action  in  this  case  was  wholly  evil,  alike 
in  its  immediate  and  its  remote  results ;  they 
simply  played  into  the  hands  of  the  extreme 
slavery  men  like  Calhoun,  and  became,  for  the 
time  being,  the  willing  accomplices  of  the  latter. 
Yet  they  would  have  accomplished  nothing  had 
it  not  been  for  the  frauds  and  outrages  perpe 
trated  by -the  gangs  of  native  and  foreign-born 
ruffians  in  the  great  cities,  under  the  leadership 
of  such  brutal  rowdies  as  Isaiah  Rynders. 


292         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

These  three  men,  Calhoun,  Birney,  and  Isaiah 
Rynders,  may  be  taken  as  types  of  the  classes 
that  were  chiefly  instrumental  in  the  election  of 
Polk,  and  that  must,  therefore,  bear  the  respon 
sibility  for  all  the  evils  attendant  thereon,  in 
cluding  among  them  the  bloody  and  unrighteous 
War  with  Mexico.  With  the  purpose  of  advan 
cing  the  cause  of  abstract  right,  but  with  the  re 
sult  of  sacrificing  all  that  was  best,  most  honest, 
and  most  high-principled  in  national  politics, 
the  Abolitionists  joined  hands  with  Northern 
roughs  and  Southern  slavocrats  to  elect  the  man 
who  was,  excepting  Tyler,  the  very  smallest  of 
the  line  of  small  presidents  who  came  in  be 
tween  Jackson  and  Lincoln. 

Owing  to  a  variety  of  causes,  the  Abolitionists 
have  received  an  immense  amount  of  hysterical 
praise,  which  they  do  not  deserve,  and  have 
been  credited  with  deeds  done  by  other  men, 
whom  they  in  reality  hampered  and  opposed 
rather  than  aided.  After  1840  the  professed 
Abolitionists  formed  but  a  small  and  compara 
tively  unimportant  portion  of  the  forces  that 
were  working  towards  the  restriction  and  ulti 
mate  destruction  of  slavery  ;  and  much  of  what 
they  did  was  positively  harmful  to  the  cause  for 
which  they  were  fighting.  Those  of  their  num 
ber  who  considered  the  Constitution  as  a  league 
with  death  and  hell,  and  who  therefore  advocated 


ABOLITIONISTS  AND   SLAVE  BARONS.     293 

a  dissolution  of  the  Union,  acted  as  rationally 
as  would  anti-polygamists  nowadays  if,  to  show 
their  disapproval  of  Mormonism,  they  should 
advocate  that  Utah  should  be  allowed  to  form 
a  separate  nation.  The  only  hope  of  ultimately 
suppressing  slavery  lay  in  the  preservation  of 
the  Union,  and  every  Abolitionist  who  argued 
or  signed  a  petition  for  its  dissolution  was  doing 
as  much  to  perpetuate  the  evil  he  complained 
of  as  if  he  had  been  a  slave-holder.  The  Lib 
erty  party,  in  running  Birney,  simply  commit 
ted  a  political  crime,  evil  in  almost  all  its  con 
sequences  ;  they  in  no  sense  paved  the  way  for 
the  Republican  party,  or  helped  forward  the 
anti-slavery  cause,  or  hurt  the  existing  organi 
zations.  Their  effect  on  the  Democracy  was 
nil ;  and  all  they  were  able  to  accomplish  with 
the  Whigs  was  to  make  them  put  forward  for 
the  ensuing  campaign  a  slave-holder  from  Lou 
isiana,  with  whom  they  were  successful.  Such 
were  the  remote  results  of  their  conduct;  the 
immediate  evils  they  produced  have  already 
been  alluded  to.  They  bore  considerable  re 
semblance  —  except  that,  after  all,  they  really 
did  have  a  principle  to  contend  for  —  to  the 
political  prohibitionists  of  the  present  day,  who 
go  into  the  third  party  organizations,  and  are, 
not  even  excepting  the  saloon-keepers  them 
selves,  the  most  efficient  allies  on  whom  intern- 
perance  and  the  liquor  traffic  can  count. 


294        THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

Anti-slavery  men  like  Giddings,  who  sup 
ported  Clay,  were  doing  a  thousand-fold  more 
effective  work  for  the  cause  they  had  at  heart 
than  all  the  voters  who  supported  Birney;  or, 
to  speak  more  accurately,  they  were  doing  all 
they  could  to  advance  the  cause,  and  the  others 
were  doing  all  they  could  to  hold  it  back.  Lin 
coln  in  I860  occupied  more  nearly  the  ground 
held  by  Clay  than  that  held  by  Birney  ;  and 
the  men  who  supported  the  latter  in  1844  were 
the  prototypes  of  those  who  wished  to  oppose 
Lincoln  in  1860,  and  only  worked  less  hard  be 
cause  they  had  less  chance.  The  ultra  Aboli 
tionists  discarded  expediency,  and  claimed  to 
act  for  abstract  right,  on  principle,  no  matter 
what  the  results  might  be  ;  in  consequence  they 
accomplished  very  little,  and  that  as  much  for 
harm  as  for  good,  until  they  ate  their  words, 
went  counter  to  their  previous  course,  thereby 
acknowledging  it  to  be  bad,  and  supported  in 
the  Republican  party  the  men  and  principles 
they  had  so  fiercely  condemned.  The  Liberty 
party  was  not  in  any  sense  the  precursor  of  the 
Republican  party,  which  was  based  as  much  on 
expediency  as  on  abstract  right,  and  was  there 
fore  able  to  accomplish  good  instead  of  harm. 
To  say  that  the  extreme  Abolitionists  triumphed 
in  Republican  success  and  were  causes  of  it,  is 
as  absurd  as  it  would  be  to  call  prohibitionists 


ABOLITIONISTS  AND   SLAVE  BARONS.      295 

successful  if,  after  countless  futile  efforts  totally 
to  prohibit  the  liquor  traffic,  and  after  savage 
denunciation  of  those  who  try  to  regulate  it, 
they  should  then  turn  round  and  form  a  com 
paratively  insignificant  portion  of  a  victorious 
high-license  party. 

Many  people  in  speaking  of  the  Abolitionists 
apparently  forget  that  the  national  government, 
even  under  Republican  rule,  would  never  have 
meddled  with  slavery  in  the  various  states  un 
less  as  a  war  measure,  made  necessary  by  the 
rebellion  into  which  the  South  was  led  by  a 
variety  of  causes,  of  which  slavery  was  chief, 
but  among  which  there  were  others  that  were 
also  prominent ;  such  as  the  separatist  spirit  of 
certain  of  the  communities  and  the  unscrupulous, 
treacherous  ambition  of  such  men  as  Davis, 
Floyd,  and  the  rest.  The  Abolitionists'  polit 
ical  organizations,  such  as  the  Liberty  party, 
generally  produced  very  little  effect  either  wa}T, 
and  were  scarcely  thought  of  during  the  con 
tests  waged  for  freedom  in  Congress.  The  men 
who  took  a  great  and  effective  part  in  the  fight 
against  slavery  were  the  men  who  remained 
within  their  respective  parties  ;  like  the  Demo 
crats  Benton  and  Wilmot,  or  the  Whigs  Seward 
and  Stevens;  When  a  new  party  with  more 
clearly  defined  principles  was  formed,  they,  for 
the  most  part,  went  into  it ;  but,  like  all  other 


296        THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

men  who  have  ever  had  a  really  great  influence, 
whether  for  good  or  bad,  on  American  politics, 
they  did  not  act  independently  of  parties,  but 
on  the  contrary  kept  within  party  lines,  —  al 
though,  of  course,  none  of  them  were  mere  blind 
and  unreasoning  partisans. 

The  plea  that  slavery  was  a  question  of  prin 
ciple,  on  which  no  compromise  could  be  accepted, 
might  have  been  made  and  could  still  be  made 
on  twenty  other  points,  —  woman  suffrage,  for 
instance.  Of  course,  to  give  women  their  just 
rights  does  not  by  any  means  imply  that  they 
should  necessarily  be  allowed  to  vote,  any  more 
than  the  bestowal  of  the  rights  of  citizenship 
upon  blacks  and  aliens  must  of  necessity  carry 
with  it  the  same  privilege.  But  there  were  until 
lately,  and  in  some  states  there  are  now,  laws  on 
the  statute  -  book  in  reference  to  women  that 
are  in  principle  as  unjust,  and  that  are  quite  as 
much  the  remnants  of  archaic  barbarism  as  was 
the  old  slave  code ;  and  though  it  is  true  that 
they  do  not  work  anything  like  the  evil  of 
the  latter,  they  yet  certainly  work  evil  enough. 
The  same  laws  that  in  one  Southern  state  gave 
a  master  a  right  to  whip  a  slave  also  allowed 
him  to  whip  his  wife,  provided  he  used  a  stick 
no  thicker  than  his  little  finger  ;  the  legal  per 
mission  to  do  the  latter  was  even  more  outrage 
ous  than  that  to  do  the  former,  yet  no  one  con- 


ABOLITIONISTS  AND  SLAVE  BARONS.      297 

sidered  it  a  ground  for  wishing  a  dissolution  of 
the  Union  or  for  declaring  against  the  existing 
parties.  The  folly  of  voting  the  Liberty  ticket 
in  1844  differed  in  degree,  but  not  at  all  in  kind, 
from  the  folly  of  voting  the  Woman  Suffrage 
ticket  in  1884. 

The  intrigue  for  the  annexation  of  Texas, 
and  for  thereby  extending  the  slave  territory 
of  the  Union,  had  taken  shape  towards  the 
close  of  Tyler's  term  of  office,  while  Calhoim 
was  secretary  of  state.  Benton,  as  an  aggres 
sive  Western  man,  desirous  of  seeing  our  ter 
ritorial  possessions  extended  in  any  direction, 
north  or  south,  always  hoped  that  in  the  end 
Texas  might  be  admitted  into  the  Union ;  but 
he  disliked  seeing  any  premature  steps  taken, 
and  was  no  party  to  the  scheme  of  forcing 
an  immediate  annexation  in  the  interests  of 
slavery.  Such  immediate  annexation  was  cer 
tain,  among  other  things,  to  bring  us  into  grave 
difficulties  not  only  with  Mexico,  but  also  with 
England,  which  was  strongly  inclined  to  take 
much  interest  of  a  practical  sort  in  the  fate  of 
Texas,  and  would,  of  course,  have  done  all  it 
could  to  bring  about  the  abolition  of  slavery 
in  that  state.  The  Southerners,  desirous  of 
increasing  the  slave  domain,  and  always  in  a 
state  of  fierce  alarm  over  the  proximity  of  any 
free  state  that  might  excite  a  servile  insurrec- 


298         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

tion,  were  impatient  to  add  the  Lone  Star  Re 
public  of  the  Ilio  Grande  to  the  number  of  their 
states;  the  Southwesterners  fell  in  with  them, 
influenced,  though  less  strongly,  by  the  same 
motives,  and  also  by  the  lust  for  new  lands  and 
by  race  hatred  towards  the  Mexicans  and  tra 
ditional  jealousy  of  Great  Britain  ;  and  these 
latter  motives  induced  many  Northwesterners 
to  follow  suit.  By  a  judicious  harping  on  all 
these  strings  Jackson  himself,  whose  name  was 
still  a  mighty  power  among  the  masses,  was  in 
duced  to  write  a  letter  favoring  instant  and 
prompt  annexation, 

This  letter  was  really  procured  for  political 
purposes.  Tyler  had  completely  identified  him 
self  with  the  Democracy,  and  especially  with 
its  extreme  separatist  wing,  to  which  Calhoun 
also  belonged,  and  which  had  grown  so  as  to 
be  already  almost  able  to  take  the  reins.  The 
separatist  chiefs  were  intriguing  for  the  presi 
dency,  and  were  using  annexation  as  a  cry  that 
would  help  them ;  and,  failing  in  this  attempt, 
many  of  the  leaders  were  willing  to  break  up 
the  Union,  and  turn  the  Southern  States,  toge 
ther  with"  Texas,  into  a  slave  -  holding  confed 
eracy.  After  Benton,  the  great  champion  of 
the  old-style  Union  Democrats  was  Van  Buren, 
who  was  opposed  to  immediate  annexation, 
sharing  the  feeling  that  prevailed  throughout 


ABOLITIONISTS  AND  SLAVE  BARONS.      299 

the  Northeast  generally  ;  although  in  certain 
circles  all  through  the  country  there  were  men 
at  work  in  its  favor,  largely  as  a  mere  matter 
of  jobbery  and  from  base  motives,  on  account 
of  speculations  in  Texan  land  and  scrip,  into 
which  various  capitalists  and  adventurers  had 
goiie  rather  extensively.  Jackson,  though  a 
Southerner,  warmly  favored  Van  Buren,  and 
was  bitterly  opposed  to  separatists  ;  but  the 
latter,  by  cunningly  working  on  his  feelings, 
without  showing  their  own  hands,  persuaded 
him  to  write  the  letter  mentioned,  and  promptly 
used  it  to  destroy  the  chances  of  Van  Buren, 
who  was  the  man  they  chiefly  feared ;  and 
though  Jackson,  at  last  roused  to  what  was 
going  on,  immediately  announced  himself  as  in 
favor  of  Van  Buren's  candidacy,  it  was  too  late 
to  undo  the  mischief. 

Benton  showed  on  this,  as  on  many  other  oc 
casions,  much  keener  political  ideas  than  his 
great  political  chief.  He  was  approached  by  a 
politician,  who  himself  was  either  one  of  those 
concerned  in  the  presidential  intrigues,  or  else 
one  of  their  dupes,  and  who  tried  to  win  him 
over  to  take  the  lead  on  their  side,  compliment 
ing  him  upon  his  former  services  to  the  cause 
of  territorial  expansion  towards  the  southwest. 
Ordinarily  the  great  Missourian  was  suscepti 
ble  enough  to  such  flatterv ;  but  on  this  occa- 


300         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

sion,  preoccupied  with  the  idea  of  an  intrigue 
for  the  presidency,  and  indignant  that  there 
should  be  an  effort  made  to  implicate  him  in 
it,  especially  as  it  was  mixed  up  with  schemes 
of  stock-jobbing  and  of  disloyalty  to  the  Union, 
he  took  fire  at  once,  and  answered  with  hot 
indignation,  in  words  afterwards  highly  re 
sented  by  his  questioner,  "  that  it  was  on  the 
part  of  some  an  intrigue  for  the  presidency, 
and  a  plot  to  dissolve  the  Union  ;  on  the  part  of 
others,  a  Texas  scrip  and  land  speculation  ;  and 
that  he  was  against  it."  The  answer  was 
published  in  the  papers,  and  brought  about  a 
total  break  between  Benton  and  the  annexation 
party. 

He  was  now  thoroughly  on  the  alert,  and 
actively  opposed  at  all  points  the  schemes  of 
those  whom  he  regarded  as  concerned  in  or  in 
stigating  the  intrigue.  He  commented  harshly 
on  Tyler's  annual  message,  which  made  a  strong 
plea  for  annexation,  even  at  the  cost  of  a  Avar 
both  with  Great  Britain  and  Mexico;  also  on 
Calhoun's  letter  to  Lord  Aberdeen,  which  was 
certainly  a  remarkable  diplomatic  document, — 
being  a  thesis  on  slavery  and  the  benefits  re 
sulting  from  it.  Tyler's  object  was  to  prepare 
the  way  for  a  secret  treaty,  which  should  secure 
the  desired  object.  Benton,  in  the  course  of 
some  severe  strictures  on  his  acts,  said,  very 


ABOLITIONISTS  AND  SLAVE  BARONS.      301 

truly,  that  it  was  evidently  the  intention  to 
keep  the  whole  matter  as  secret  as  possible 
until  the  treaty  was  concluded,  "  and  then  to 
force  its  adoption  for  the  purpose  of  increasing 
the  area  of  slave  territory,  or  to  make  its  rejec 
tion  a  cause  for  the  secession  of  the  Southern 
States ;  and  in  either  event  and  in  all  cases  to 
make  the  question  of  annexation  a  controlling 
one  in  the  nomination  of  presidential  candi 
dates,  and  also  in  the  election  itself." 

When  the  treaty  proposed  by  the  administra 
tion  was  rejected,  and  when  it  became  evident 
that  neither  Tyler  nor  Calhoun,  the  two  most 
prominent  champions  of  the  extreme  separa 
tists,  had  any  chance  for  the  Democratic  nom 
ination,  the  disunion  side  of  the  intrigue  was 
brought  to  the  front  in  many  of  the  Southern 
States,  beginning  of  course  with  South  Caro 
lina.  A  movement  was  made  for  a  convention 
of  the  Southern  States,  to  be  held  in  the  inter 
est  of  the  scheme ;  the  key-note  being  struck  in 
the  cry  of  "  Texas  or  disunion ! "  But  this  con 
vention  was  given  up,  on  account  of  the  strong 
opposition  it  excited  in  the  so-called  "  Border 
States," — an  opposition  largely  stirred  up  and 
led  by  Benton.  Once  more  the  haughty  slave 
leaders  of  the  Southeast  had  found  that  in  the 
Missouri  Senator  they  had  an  opponent  whose 
fearlessness  quite  equaled  their  own,  and  whose 


302  THOMAS  HART  BENT  ON. 

stubborn  temper  and  strength  of  purpose  made 
him  at  least  a  match  for  themselves,  in  spite  of 
all  their  dash  and  fiery  impetuosity.  It  must 
have  sounded  strange,  indeed,  to  Northern  ears, 
accustomed  to  the  harsh  railings  and  insolent 
threats  of  the  South  Carolina  senators,  to  hear 
one  of  the  latter  complaining  that  Benton's  tone 
in  the  debate  was  arrogant,  overbearing,  and 
dictatorial  towards  those  who  were  opposed  to 
him.  This  same  Senator,  McDuffie,  had  been 
speaking  of  the  proposed  Southern  meeting  at 
Nashville;  and  Ben  ton  warned  him  that  such 
a  meeting  would  never  take  place,  and  that  lie 
had  mistaken  the  temper  of  the  Tennesseans ; 
and  also  reminded  him  that  General  Jackson 
was  still  alive,  and  that  the  South  Carolinians 
in  particular  must  needs  be  careful  if  they 
hoped  to  agree  with  his  followers,  whose  name 
was  still  legion,  because  he  would  certainly 
take  the  same  position  towards  a  disunion 
movement  in  the  interests  of  slavery  that  he 
had  already  taken  towards  a  nullification  move 
ment  in  the  interests  of  free  trade.  "  Preser 
vation  of  the  federal  Union  is  as  strong  in  the 
old  Roman's  heart  now  as  ever ;  and  while,  as 
a  Christian,  he  forgives  all  that  is  past  (if  it 
were  past),  yet  no  old  tricks  under  new  names! 
Texas  disunion  will  be  to  him  the  same  as 
tariff  disunion;  and  if  he  detects  a  Texas  dis- 


ABOLITIONISTS  AND  SLAVE  BARONS.      303 

unionist  nestling  into  his  bed,  I  say  again  :  Woe 
unto  the  luckless  wight !  "  Boldly  and  forcibly 
he  went  on  to  paint  the  real  motives  of  the  pro 
moters  of  the  scheme,  and  the  real  character  of 
the  scheme  itself  ;  stating  that,  though  mixed 
up  with  various  speculative  enterprises  and 
with  other  intrigues,  yet  disunion  was  at  the 
bottom  of  it  all,  and  that  already  the  cry  had 
become,  "  Texas  without  the  Union,  rather 
thiin  the  Union  without  Texas  !  "  "  Under  the 
pretext  of  getting  Texas  into  the  Union  the 
scheme  is  to  get  the  South  out  of  it.  A 
Southern  Confederacy  stretching  from  the  At 
lantic  to  the  Californias.  ...  is  the  cherished 
vision  of  disappointed  ambition."  He  bitterly 
condemned  secession,  as  simply  disunion  begat 
by  nullification,  and  went  on  to  speak  of  his 
own  attitude  in  apparently  opposing  the  admis 
sion  of  Texas,  which  he  had  always  desired  to 
see  become  a  part  of  the  Union,  and  which  he 
had  always  insisted  rightfully  belonged  to  us, 
and  to  have  been  given  away  by  Monroe's  treaty 
with  Spain.  "  All  that  is  intended  and  foreseen. 
The  intrigue  for  the  presidency  was  the  first  act 
in  the  drama ;  the  dissolution  of  the  Union  the 
second.  And  I,  who  hate  intrigue  and  love  the 
Union,  can  only  speak  of  the  intriguers  and  dis- 
unionists  with  warmth  and  indignation.  The 
oldest  advocate  for  the  recovery  of  Texas,  I 


304  THOMAS  HART  BE  NT  ON. 

must  be  allowed  to  speak  in  just  terms  of  the 
criminal  politicians  who  prostituted  the  ques 
tion  of  its  recovery  to  their  own  base  purposes, 
and  delayed  its  success  by  degrading  and  dis 
gracing  it.  A  Western  man,  and  coming  from 
a  state  more  than  any  other  interested  in  the 
recovery  of  this  country,  so  unaccountably 
thrown  away  by  the  treaty  of  1819,  I  must  be 
allowed  to  feel  indignant  at  seeing  Atlantic 
politicians  seizing  upon  it,  and  making  it  a  sec 
tional  question  for  the  purples  of  ambition 
and  disunion.  I  have  spoken  warmly  of  these 
plotters  and  intriguers ;  but  I  have  not  per 
mitted  their  conduct  to  alter  my  own,  or  to  re 
lax  my  zeal  for  the  recovery  of  the  sacrificed 
country.  I  have  helped  to  reject  the  disunion 
treaty  ;  and  that  obstacle  being  removed,  I  have 
brought  in  the  bill  which  will  insure  the  recov 
ery  of  Texas,  with  peace  and  honor,  and  with 
the  Union." 

It  is  important  to  remember,  in  speaking  of 
his  afterwards  voting  to  admit  Texas,  that  this 
was  what  he  had  all  along  favored,  and  that  he 
now  opposed  it  only  on  account  of  special  cir 
cumstances.  In  both  cases  he  was  right ;  for, 
slavery  or  no  slavery,  it  would  have  been  a 
most  unfortunate  thing  for  us,  and  still  worse 
for  the  Texans,  if  the  latter  had  been  allowed 
to  develop  into  an  independent  nation.  Benton 


ABOLITIONISTS   AND   SLAVE  BARONS.      305 

deserves  the  greatest  credit  for  the  way  in 
which  he  withstood  the  ignorant  popular  feel 
ing  of  his  own  section  in  regard  to  Tyler's  pro 
posed  treaty  ;  and  not  only  did  he  show  himself 
able  to  withstand  pressure  from  behind  him, 
but  also  prompt  in  resenting  threats  made  by 
outsiders.  When  McDuffie  told  him  that  the 
remembrance  of  his  attitude  on  the  bill  would, 
to  his  harm,  meet  him  on  some  future  day,  like 
the  ghost  that  appeared  to  Brutus  at  Philippi, 
he  answered  :  — 

I  can  promise  the  ghost  and  his  backers  that  if  the 
fight  goes  against  me  at  this  new  Philippi,  with  which 
I  am  threatened,  and  the  enemies  of  the  American 
Union  triumph  over  me  as  the  enemies  of  Roman  lib 
erty  triumphed  over  Brutus  and  Cassius,  I  shall  not 
fall  upon  my  sword,  as  Brutus  did,  though  Cassius  be 
killed,  and  run  it  through  my  own  body  ;  but  I  shall 
save  it  and  save  myself  for  another  day  and  another 
use,  —  for  the  day  when  the  battle  of  the  disunion  of 
these  states  is  to  be  fought,  not  with  words  but  with 
iron,  and  for  the  hearts  of  the  traitors  who  appear  in 
arms  against  their  country. 

Such  a  stern,  defiant,  almost  prophetic  warn 
ing  did  more  to  help  the  Union  cause  than  vol 
umes  of  elaborate  constitutional  argument,  and 
it  would  have  been  well  for  the  Northern  States 
had  they  possessed  men  as  capable  of  uttering 
it  as  was  the  iron  Westerner.  Benton  always 

£0 


806  THOMAS   HART   BENTON. 

showed  at  bis  best  when  the  honor  or  integrity 
of  the  nation  was  menaced,  whether  by  foes  from 
without  or  by  foes  from  within.  On  such  occa 
sions  his  metal  always  rang  true.  When  there 
was  any  question  of  breaking  faith  with  the 
Union,  or  of  treachery  towards  it,  his  figure  al 
ways  loomed  up  as  one  of  the  chief  in  the  ranks 
of  its  defenders ;  and  his  follies  and  weaknesses 
sink  out  of  sight  when  we  think  of  the  tremen 
dous  debt  which  the  country  owes  him  for  his 
sorely  tried  and  unswerving  loyalty. 

The  treaty  alluded  to  by  Benton  in  his  speech 
against  the  abortive  secession  movement  was 
the  one  made  with  Texas  wThile  Calhoun  was 
secretary  of  state,  and  submitted  to  the  Senate 
by  Tyler,  with  a  message  as  extraordinary  as 
some  of  his  secretary's  utterances.  The  treaty 
was  preposterously  unjust  and  iniquitous.  It 
provided  for  the  annexation  of  Texas,  and  also 
of  a  very  large  portion  of  Mexico,  to  which 
Texas  had  no  possible  title,  and  this  without 
consulting  Mexico  in  any  way  whatever  ;  Cal 
houn  advancing  the  plea  that  it  was  necessary 
to  act  immediately  on  account  of  the  danger 
that  Texas  was  in  of  falling  under  the  control  of 
England,  and  therefore  having  slavery  abolished 
within  its  borders  ;  while  Tyler  blandly  an 
nounced  that  we  had  acquired  title  to  the  ceded 
territory  —  which  belonged  to  one  power  and 


ABOLITIONISTS  AND  SLAVE  BARONS.      307 

was  ceded  to  us  by  another  —  through  his  sig 
nature  to  the  treaty,  and  that,  pending  its  rati 
fication  by  the  Senate,  he  had  dispatched  troops 
to  the  scene  of  action  to  protect  the  ceded  land 
"from  invasion,"  —  the  territory  to  be  thus 
protected  from  Mexican  invasion  being  then 
and  always  having  been  part  and  parcel  of 
Mexico. 

Benton  opposed  the  ratification  of  the  treaty 
in  a  very  strong  speech,  during  which  he  merci 
lessly  assailed  both  Tyler  and  Calhoun.  The 
conduct  of  the  former  he  dismissed  with  the  con 
temptuous  remark  that  he  had  committed  "  a 
caper  about  equal  to  the  mad  freaks  with  which 
the  unfortunate  Emperor  Paul,  of  Russia,  was 
accustomed  to  astonish  Europe ; "  and  roughly 
warned  him  to  be  careful  how  he  tried  to  imi 
tate  Jackson's  methods,  because  in  heroic  imi 
tations  there  was  no  middle  ground,  and  if  he 
failed  to  fill  the  role  of  hero  he  would  then  per 
force  find  himself  playing  that  of  harlequin. 
Calhoun  received  more  attention,  for  he  was  far 
more  worthy  of  a  foeman's  steel  than  was  his 
nominal  superior,  and  Benton  exposed  at  length 
the  willful  exaggeration  and  the  perversion  of 
the  truth  of  which  the  Carolinian  had  been 
guilty  in  trying  to  raise  the  alarm  of  English 
interference  in  Texas,  for  the  purpose  of  excus 
ing  the  haste  with  which  the  treaty  was  carried 
through. 


308         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

He  showed  at  length  the  outrage  we  should 
inflict  upon  Mexico  by  seizing  "  two  thousand 
miles  of  her  territory,  without  a  word  of  expla 
nation  with  her,  and  by  virtue  of  a  treaty  with 
Texas  to  which  she  was  no  party  ;  "  and  lie 
conclusively  proved,  making  use  of  his  own 
extensive  acquaintance  with  history,  especially 
American  history,  that  the  old  Texas,  the  only 
territory  that  the  Texans  themselves  or  we 
could  claim  with  any  shadow  of  right,  made 
but  a  fraction  of  the  territory  now  "  ceded  "  to 
us.  He  laughed  at  the  idea  of  calling  the  ter 
ritory  Texas,  and  speaking  of  its  forcible  cut 
ting  off  as  re-annexation,  "  Humboldt  calls  it 
New  Mexico,  Chihuahua,  Coahuila  and  Nuevo 
Santander;  and  the  civilized  world  may  qualify 
this  re-annexation  by  some  odious  arid  terrible 
epithet  .  .  .  robbery  ;  "  then  he  went  on  to  draw 
a  biting  contrast  between  our  treatment  of  Mex 
ico  and  our  treatment  of  England.  u  Would 
we  take  two  thousand  miles  of  Canada  in  the 
same  way  ?  I  presume  not.  And  why  not  ? 
Why  not  treat  Great  Britain  and  Mexico  alike  ? 
Why  not  march  up  to  'fifty-four  forty  '  as  cour 
ageously  as  we  march  upon  the  Rio  Grande  ? 
Because  Great  Britain  is  powerful  and  Mexico 
weak, —  a  reason  which  may  fail  in  policy  as 
much  as  in  morals."  Also  he  ridiculed  the  flurry 
of  fear  into  which  the  Southern  slave-holders 


ABOLITIONISTS  AND  SLAVE  BARONS.         309 

affected  to  be  cast  by  the  dread  of  England's 
hostility  to  slavery,  when  they  had  just  acqui 
esced  in  making  a  treaty  with  her  by  which  we 
bound  ourselves  to  help  to  put  down  the  slave- 
trade.  He  then  stated  his  own  position,  show 
ing  why  he  wished  us  to  have  the  original 
Texan  lands,  if  we  could  get  them  honorably, 
and  without  robbing  Mexico  of  new  territory; 
and  at  the  same  time  sneered  at  Calhoun  and 
Tyler  because  they  had  formerly  favored  the 
Monroe  treaty,  by  which  we  abandoned  our 
claims  to  them  :  — 

We  want  Texas,  that  is  to  say,  the  Texas  of  La 
Salle  ;  and  we  want  it  for  great  natural  reasons, 
obvious  as  day,  and  permanent  as  nature.  We  want 
it  because  it  is  geographically  appurtenant  to  our 
division  of  North  America,  essential  to  our  political, 
commercial,  and  social  system,  and  because  it  would 
be  detrimental  and  injurious  to  us  to  have  it  fall  into 
the  hands  or  sink  under  the  domination  of  any  for 
eign  power.  For  these  reasons  I  was  against  sacrific 
ing  the  country  when  it  was  thrown  away,  —  and 
thrown  away  by  those  who  are  now  so  suddenly  pos 
sessed  of  a  fury  to  get  it  back.  For  these  reasons  I 
am  for  getting  it  back  whenever  it  can  be  done  with 
peace  and  honor,  or  even  at  the  price  of  just  war 
against  any  intrusive  European  power ;  but  I  am 
against  all  disguise  and  artifice,  —  against  all  pre 
texts,  —  and  especially  against  weak  and  groundless 
pretexts,  discreditable  to  ourselves  and  offensive  to 


olO  THOMAS   HART  BEN  TON. 

others,  too  thin  and  shallow  not  to  be  seen  through 
by  every  beholder,  and  merely  invented  to  cover  un 
worthy  purposes. 

The  treaty  was  rejected  by  an  overwhelming 
vote,  although  Buchanan  led  a  few  of  his  time 
serving  comrades  from  the  North  to  the  sup 
port  of  the  extreme  Southern  element.  Benton 
then  tried,  but  failed,  to  get  through  a  bill  pro 
viding  for  a  joint  agreement  between  Mexico, 
Texas,  and  the  United  States  to  settle  definitely 
all  boundary  questions.  Meanwhile  the  presi 
dential  election  occurred,  with  the  result  already 
mentioned.  The  separatist  and  annexationist 
Democrats,  the  extreme  slavery  wing  of  the 
party,  defeated  Van  Buren  and  nominated  Polk, 
who  was  their  man  ;  the  Whigs  nominated  Clay, 
who  was  heartily  opposed  to  all  the  schemes  of 
the  disunion  and  extreme  slavery  men,  and  who, 
if  elected,  while  he  might  very  properly  have 
consented  to  the  admission  of  Texas  with  its 
old  boundaries,  would  never  have  brought  on  a 
war  nor  have  attempted  to  add  a  vast  extent  of 
new  slave  territory  to  the  Union.  Clay  would 
have  been  elected,  and  the  slavery  disunionists 
defeated,  if  in  the  very  nick  of  time  the  Aboli 
tionists  had  not  stepped  in  to  support  the  latter, 
and  by  their  blindness  in  supporting  Birney 
given  the  triumph  to  their  own  most  bitter  op 
ponents.  Then  the  Abolitionists,  having  played 


ABOLITIONISTS  AND  SLAVE  BARONS.         311 

their  only  card,  and  played  it  badly,  Lad  to  sit 
still  and  see  what  evil  their  acts  had  produced  ; 
they  had  accomplished  just  as  much  as  men 
generally  do  accomplish  when  they  dance  to  the 
tune  that  their  worst  foes  play. 

Folk's  election  gave  an  enormous  impulse  to 
the  annexation  movement,  and  made  it  doubly 
and  trebly  difficult  for  any  one  to  withstand  i£ 
The  extreme  disunion  and  slavery  men,  of  course, 
hated  Benton,  himself  a  Southwesterner  from  a 
slave-holding  state,  with  peculiar  venom,  on  ac 
count  of  his  attitude,  very  justly  regarding  him 
as  the  main  obstacle  in  their  path  ;  and  the  din 
and  outcry  raised  against  all  who  opposed  the 
schemes  of  the  intriguers  was  directed  with 
especial  fury  against  the  Missourian.  Pie  was 
accused  of  being  allied  to  the  Whigs,  of  wishing 
to  break  up  the  Democracy,  and  of  many  other 
things.  Indeed,  Benton's  own  people  were  very 
largely  against  him,  and  it  must  always  be  re 
membered  that  whereas  Northeastern  statesmen 
were  certain  to  be  on  the  popular  side  in  taking 
a  stand  against  the  extreme  pro -slavery  men^ 
Benton's  position  was  often  just  the  reverse. 
With  them  it  was  politic  to  do  right ;  with 
him  it  was  not ;  and  for  this  reason  the  praise 
awarded  the  latter  should  be  beyond  measure 
greater  than  that  awarded  to  the  former. 

Still,  there  can  be  little  question  that  he  was 


312         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

somewhat,  even  although  only  slightly,  influ 
enced  by  the  storm  of  which  he  had  to  bear 
the  brunt ;  indeed,  he  would  have  been  more 
than  human  if  he  had  not  been  ;  and  probably 
this  outside  pressure  was  one  among  the  causes 
that  induced  him  to  accept  a  compromise  in  the 
matter,  which  took  effect  just  before  Polk  was 
Inaugurated.  The  House  of  Representatives  had 
passed  a  resolution  giving  the  consent  of  Con 
gress  to  the  admission  of  Texas  as  a  state,  and 
allowing  it  the  privilege  of  forming  four  addi 
tional  states  out  of  its  territory,  whenever  it 
should  see  fit.  The  line  of  the  Missouri  Compro 
mise,  36°  30',  was  run  through  this  new  terri 
tory,  slavery  being  prohibited  in  the  lands  lying 
north  of  it,  and  permissible  or  not,  according  to 
the  will  of  the  state  seeking  admission,  in  those 
lying  south  of  it.  Ben  ton  meanwhile  had  intro 
duced  a  bill  merely  providing  that  negotiations 
should  be  entered  into  with  Texas  for  its  admis 
sion,  the  proposed  treaty  or  articles  of  agreement 
to  be  submitted  to  the  Senate  or  to  Congress. 
He  thereby  kept  the  control  in  the  hands  of  the 
legislature,  which  the  joint  resolution  did  not ; 
and  moreover,  as  he  said  in  his  speech,  he  wished 
to  provide  for  due  consideration  being  shown 
Mexico  in  the  arrangement  of  the  boundary,  and 
for  the  matter  being  settled  by  commissioners. 
Neither  resolution  nor  bill  could  get  through 


ABOLITIONISTS  AND  SLAVE  BARONS.        313 

by  itself  ;  and  accordingly  it  was  proposed  to 
combine  both  into  one  measure,  leaving  the 
president  free  to  choose  either  plan.  To  this 
proposition  Benton  finally  consented,  it  being 
understood  that,  as  only  three  days  of  Tyler's 
term  remained,  the  execution  of  the  act  would 
be  left  to  the  in-coming  president,  and  that  the 
latter  would  adopt  Benton's  plans.  The  friends 
of  the  admission  of  Texas  assured  the  doubtful 
voters  that  such  would  be  the  case.  Polk  him 
self  gave  full  assurance  that  he  would  appoint 
a  commission,  as  provided  by  Benton's  bill,  if 
passed,  with  the  House  resolution  as  an  alterna 
tive ;  and  McDuffie,  Calboun's*  friend,  and  the 
senator  from  South  Carolina,  announced  with 
out  reserve  that  Calhoun  —  for  Tyler  need  not 
be  considered  in  the  matter,  after  it  had  been 
committed  to  the  great  nullifier  —  would  not 
have  the  "  audacity  "  to  try  to  take  the  settle 
ment  of  the  question  away  from  the  president, 
who  was  to  be  inaugurated  on  the  fourth  of 
March.  On  the  strength  of  these  assurances, 
which,  if  made  good,  would,  of  course,  have  ren 
dered  the  "  alternative  "  a  merely  nominal  one, 
Benton  supported  the  measure,  which  was  then 
passed.  Contrary  to  all  expectation,  Calhoun 
promptly  acted  upon  the  legislative  clause,  and 
Polk  made  no  effort  to  undo  what  the  former 
had  done.  This  caused  intense  chagrin  and 


814  THOMAS  HART  BI•:^TO^T. 

anger  to  the  Bentonians  ;  but  they  should  cer 
tainly  have  taken  such  a  contingency  into  ac 
count,  and  though  they  might  with  much  show 
of  reason  say  that  they  .had  been  tricked  into 
acting  as  they  had  done,  yet  it  is  probable  that 
the  immense  pressure  from  behind  had  made 
Benton  too  eager  to  follow  any  way  he  could 
find  that  would  take  him  out  of  the  position 
into  which  his  conscience  had  led  him.  No 
amount  of  pressure  would  have  made  him  de 
liberately  sanction  a  wrong ;  but  it  did  render 
him  a  little  less  wary  in  watching  to  see  that 
the  right  was  not  infringed  upon.  It  was 
most  natural  tliat  he  should  be  anxious  to  find 
a  common  ground  for  himself  and  his  constit 
uents  to  stand  on ;  but  it  is  to  be  regretted  that 
this  anxiety  to  find  a  common  ground  should 
have  made  him  willing  to  trust  blindly  to  vague 
pledges  and  promises,  which  he  ought  to  have 
known  would  not  be  held  in  the  least  binding 
by  those  on  whose  behalf  they  were  supposed 
to  be  made. 

Acting  under  this  compromise  measure  Texas 
was  admitted,  and  the  foundation  for  our  war 
with  Mexico  was  laid.  Calhoun,  under  whom 
this  was  done,  nevertheless  sincerely  regretted 
the  war  itself,  and  freely  condemned  Folk's  ad 
ministration  for  bringing  it  on  ;  his  own  posi 
tion  being  that  he  desired  to  obtain  without  a 


ABOLITIONISTS  AND   SLAVE  BARONS.        315 

war  what  it  was  impossible  we  should  get  except 
at  the  cost  of  one.     Benton,  who  had  all  along 
consistently  opposed  doing  a  wrong  to  Mexico, 
attacked  the  whole  war  party,  and  in  a  strong 
and  bitter  speech   accused    Calhoun   of   being 
the  cause  of  the  contest ;  showing  plainly  that, 
whatever  the  ex-secretary  of  state  might  say 
in  regard  to  the  acts  immediately  precipitating 
the  conflict,  he  himself  was  responsible  as  being 
in  truth  their  original  cause.    While  stating  his 
conviction,  however,  that  Calhoun  was  the  real 
author  of  the  war,  Benton  added  that  he  did  not 
believe  that  war  was  his  object,  although  an  in 
evitable  incident  of  the  course  he  had  pursued. 
Although  heartily  opposed  to  the  war  in  its 
origin,  Benton  very  properly  believed  in  prose 
cuting  it  with  the  utmost  vigor  when  once  we 
were  fairly  in  ;  and  it  was  mainly  owing  to  him 
that  the  proposed  policy  of  a  "  masterly  inactiv 
ity"  was  abandoned,  and  the  scheme  of  push 
ing  straight  for  the  city  of  Mexico  adopted  in 
its  stead.     Indeed,  it  was  actually  proposed  to 
make  him.  lieutenant-general,  and  therefore  the 
commander-in-chief   of   our   forces  in    Mexico ; 
but  this  was  defeated  in  the  Senate,  very  for 
tunately,  as  it  would  have  been  a  great  outrage 
upon  Scott,  Taylor,  and  every  other  soldier  with 
real  military  training.     It  seems  extraordinary 
that  Benton  himself  should  not  have  seen  the 
absurdity  and  wrong  of  such  a  proposition. 


316        THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

The  wonderful  hardihood  and  daring  shown 
in  the  various  expeditions  against  Mexico,  espe 
cially  in  those  whereby  her  northwest  territory 
was  wrested  from  her,  naturally  called  forth 
all  Benton's  sympathy ;  and  one  of  his  best 
speeches  was  that  made  to  welcome  Doniphan's 
victorious  volunteers  after  their  return  home 
from  their  famous  inarch  to  Chihuahua. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

SLAVERY  IN  THE  NEW   TEKEITOKIES. 

HARDLY  was  Polk  elected  before  it  became 
evident  to  Benton  and  the  other  Jacksonians 
that  the  days  of  the  old  Union  or  Nationalist 
Democracy  were  over,  and  that  the  separatist 
and  disunion  elements  within  the  party  had 
obtained  the  upper  hand.  The  first  sign  of  the 
new  order  of  things  was  the  displacement  of 
Blair,  editor  of  the  "  Globe,"  the  Democratic 
newspaper  organ.  Blair  was  a  strong  Unionist, 
and  had  been  bitterly  hostile  to  Calhoun  and 
the  Nullifiers.  He  had  also  opposed  Tyler,  the 
representative  of  those  states-rights  and  separa 
tist  Democrats,  who  by  their  hostility  to  Jack 
son  had  been  temporarily  driven  into  the  Whig 
camp,  and  who,  finding  themselves  in  very  un 
congenial  society,  and  seeing,  moreover,  that 
their  own  principles  were  gradually  coming  to 
the  front  in  the  old  party,  had  begun  drifting 
back  again  into  it.  Folk's  chances  of  election 
were  so  precarious  that  he  was  most  anxious  to 
conciliate  the  Separatists  ;  besides  which  he  at 


818  THOMAS  HART  BENT  ON. 

heart  sympathized  with  their  views,  and  had 
himself  been  brought  forward  in  the  Demo 
cratic  convention  to  beat  the  National  candi 
date,  Van  Buren.  Moreover,  Tyler  withdrew 
from  the  contest  in  his  favor;  in  part  payment 
for  which  help,  soon  after  the  election,  Blair 
was  turned  out,  and  Ritchie  of  Virginia,  a  man 
whose  views  suited  the  new  Democratic  leaders, 
was  put  in  his  place  ;  to  the  indignation  not 
only  of  Benton,  but  also  of  Jackson  himself, 
then  almost  on  his  death-bed.  Of  course  the 
break  between  the  two  wings  was  as  yet  by  no 
means  complete.  Polk  needed  the  Union  Dem 
ocrats,  and  the  latter  were  still  in  good  party 
standing.  Benton  himself,  as  has  been  seen, 
was  offered  the  command  of  all  the  forces  in 
Mexico,  but  the  governmental  policy,  and  the 
attitude  of  the  party  in  Congress  after  1844, 
were  widely  different  from  what  they  had  been 
while  Jackson's  influence  was  supreme,  or  while 
the  power  he  left  behind  him  was  wielded  by  a 
knot  of  Union  men. 

From  this  time  the  slavery  question  dwarfed 
all  others,  and  was  the  one  with  which  Benton, 
as  well  as  other  statesmen,  had  mainly  to  deal. 
He  had  been  very  loath  to  acknowledge  that  it 
was  ever  to  become  of  such  overshadowing  im 
portance  ;  until  late  in  his  life  he  had  not 
realized  that,  interwoven  with  the  disunionist 


SLAVERY  IN   THE  NEW  TERRITORIES.    319 

movement,  it  bad  grown  so  as  to  become  in 
reality  the  one  and  only  question  before  the 
people;  but,  this  once  thoroughly  understood,  he 
henceforth  devoted  his  tremendous  energies  to 
the  struggle  with  it.  He  possessed  such  phe 
nomenal  power  of  application  and  of  study,  and 
his  capacity  for  and  his  delight  in  work  were 
so  extraordinary,  that  he  was  able  at  the  same 
time  to  grapple  with  many  other  subjects  of 
importance,  and  to  present  them  in  a  way  that 
showed  he  had  thoroughly  mastered  them  both 
in  principle  and  detail,  —  as  witness  his  speech 
in  favor  of  giving  the  control  of  the  coast  survey 
to  the  navy  ;  but  henceforth  the  importance  of 
his  actions  lay  in  their  relation  to  the  slavery 
extension  movements. 

He  had  now  entered  on  what  may  fairly  be 
called  the  heroic  part  of  his  career ;  for  it  would 
be  difficult  to  choose  any  other  word  to  express 
our  admiration  for  the  unflinching  and  defiant 
courage  with  which,  supported  only  by  con 
science  and  by  his  loving  loyalty  to  the  Union, 
he  battled  for  the  losing  side,  although  by  so 
doing  he  jeopardized  and  eventually  ruined  his 
political  prospects,  being  finally,  as  punishment 
for  his  boldness  in  opposing  the  dominant  fac 
tion  of  the  Missouri  Democracy,  turned  out  of 
the  Senate,  wherein  he  had  passed  nearly  half  his 
life.  Indeed,  his  was  one  of  those  natures  that 


320  THOMAS  HART  BEN  TON. 

show  better  in  defeat  than  in  victory.  In  his 
career  there  were  many  actions  that  must  com 
mand  our  unqualified  admiration ;  such  were 
his  hostility  to  the  Nullifiers,  wherein,  taking 
into  account  his  geographical  location  and  his 
refusal  to  compromise,  he  did  better  than  any 
other  public  man,  not  even  excepting  Jackson 
and  Webster  ;  his  belief  in  honest  money ;  and 
his  attitude  towards  all  questions  involving  the 
honor  or  the  maintenance  and  extension  of  the 
Union.  But  in  all  these  matters  he  was  backed 
more  or  less  heartily  by  his  state,  and  he  had 
served  four  terms  in  the  federal  Senate  as  the 
leading  champion  and  representative,  not  alone 
of  Missouri,  but  also  of  the  entire  West.  When, 
however,  the  slavery  question  began  to  enter 
upon  its  final  stage,  Benton  soon  found  himself 
opposed  to  a  large  and  growing  faction  of  the 
Missouri  Democracy,  which  increased  so  rapidly 
that  it  soon  became  dominant.  But  he  never 
for  an  instant  yielded  his  convictions,  even  when 
he  saw  the  ground  being  thus  cut  from  under 
his  feet,  fighting  for  the  right  as  sturdily  as 
ever,  facing  his  fate  fearlessly,  and  going  down 
without  a  murmur.  The  contrast  between  the 
conduct  towards  the  slavery  disunionists  of  this 
Democrat  from  a  slave -holding  state,  with  a 
hostile  majority  at  home  against  him,  and  the 
conduct  of  Webster,  a  Whig,  enthusiastically 


SLAVERY  IN  THE  NEW  TERRITORIES.     321 

backed  by  his  own  free  state,  in  the  same  issue, 
is  a  painful  one  for  the  latter.  Indeed,  on  any 
moral  point,  Benton  need  have  no  cause  to  fear 
comparison  with  any  of  his  great  rivals  in  the 
political  arena.  During  his  career,  the_United 
States_Senate_was  perhaps  the  most  influential, 
and  certainly  the  ablest  legislative  body  in  the 
world-5-and  after  Jackson's  presidency  came  to 
an  end  the  really  great  statesmen  and  political 
leaders  of  the  country  were  to  be  found  in  it, 
and  not  in  the  executive  chair.  The  period 
during  which  the  great  Missourian  was  so  prom 
inent  a  figure  in  our  politics,  and  which  lasted 
up  to  the  time  of  the  Civil  War,  might  very  ap 
propriately  be  known  in  our  history  as  the  time 
of  the  supremacy  of  the  Senate.  Such  senators 
as  Benton,  Webster,  Clay,  and  Calhoun,  and 
later  on  Douglas,  Seward,  and  Sumner,  fairly 
towered  above  presidents  like  the  obscure  South 
erners,  Tyler  and  Polk,  or  the  truckling,  time 
serving  Northern  politicians,  Pierce  and  Buch 
anan.  During  the  long  interval  coming  be 
tween  the  two  heroic  ages  of  American  history, 
—  the  age  of  Washington  and  Franklin,  and  the 
age  of  Lincoln  and  Grant,  —  it  was  but  rarely 
that  the  nation  gave  its  greatest  gift  to  its  best 
or  its  greatest  son, 

Benton  had  come  into  the  Senate  at  the  same 
time  that  Missouri  was  admitted  into  the  Union, 
21     • 


322         THOMAS  HART  BENTOX. 

with  thanks,  therefore,  to  the  same  measure,  the 
Missouri  Compromise  bill.  This  shut  out  slav 
ery  from  all  territory  north  of  the  line  of  80°  80', 
and  did  not  make  it  obligatory  even  where  it  was 
permissible  ;  and  the  immediate  cause  of  Ben- 
ton's  downfall  was  his  courage  and  persistency 
in  defending  the  terms  of  this  compromise  from 
the  attacks  of  the  Southern  slavery  extension- 
ists  and  disunionists.  The  pro-slavery  feeling 
was  running  ever  higher  and  higher  through 
out  the  South  ;  and  his  stand  on  this  question 
aroused  the  most  furious  anger  among  a  con 
stantly  increasing  number  of  his  constituents, 
and  made  him  the  target  for  bitter  and  savage 
assaults  on  the  part  of  his  foes,  the  spirit  of  hos 
tility  against  him  being  carried  to  such  length  as 
finally  almost  to  involve  him  in  an  open  brawl 
on  the  floor  of  the  Senate  with  one  of  his  col 
leagues,  Foote,  who,  like  his  fellow  fire-eaters, 
found  that  Ben  ton  was  not  a  man  who  could  be 
bullied.  Indeed,  his  iron  will  and  magnificent 
physique  both  fitted  him  admirably  for  such  a 
contest  against  odds,  and  he  seems  to  have  en 
tered  into  it  with  a  positive  zest. 

The  political  Abolitionists  having  put  Polk  in 
power,  their  action  bore  fruit  after  its  kind,  and 
very  soon  the  question  had  to  be  faced,  as  to 
what  should  be  done  with  the  immense  tracts  of 
territory  conquered  from  Mexico.  Benton  op- 


SLAVERY  IN   THE  NEW  TERRITORIES.     323 

posed,  as  being  needless  and  harmful,  the  Wil- 
mpt  Proviso,  which  forbade  the  introduction  of 
slavery  into  any  part  of  the  territory  so  acquired. 
He  argued,  and  produced  in  evidence  the  laws 
and  Constitution  of  Mexico,  that  the  soil  of  Cal 
ifornia  and  Mexico  was  already  free,  and  that  as 
slavery  would  certainly  never  be,  and  indeed 
could  never  be,  introduced  into  either  territory, 
the  agitation  of  the  question  could  only  result 
in  harm.  Calhoun  and  the  other  extreme  slav 
ery  leaders  welcomed  the  discussion  over  this 
proviso,  which  led  Benton  to  remark  that  the 
Abolitionists  and  the  Nullifiers  were  necessary 
to  each  other,  —  the  two  blades  of  a  pair  of 
shears,  neither  of  which  could  cut  until  they 
were  joined  together. 

When  Calhoun  introduced  his  famous  reso 
lutions  declaring  that  Congress  had  no  power 
to  interfere  with  slavery  in  the  territories,  and 
therefore  no  power  to  prevent  the  admission 
of  new  states  except  on  the  condition  of  their 
prohibiting  slavery  within  their  limits,  Benton 
promptly  and  strongly  opposed  them  as  being 
firebrands  needlessly  thrown  to  inflame  the  pas 
sions  of  the  extremists,  and,  moreover,  as  being 
disunionist  in  tendency.  The  following  is  his 
own  account  of  what  then  took  place  :  "  Mr. 
Calhoun  said  he  had  expected  the  support  of 
Mr.  Benton  '  as  the  representative  of  a  slave- 


324        THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

holding  state.'  Mr.  Benton  answered  that  it 
was  impossible  that  he  could  have  expected 
such  a  thing.  'Then,'  said  Mr.  Calhoun,  'I 
shall  know  where  to  find  that  gentleman.'  To 
which  Mr.  Benton  said :  '  I  shall  be  found  in 
the  right  place,  —  on  the  side  of  my  country 
and  the  Union.'  This  answer,  given  on  that  day 
and  on  the  spot,  is  one  of  the  incidents  of  his  life 
which  Mr.  Benton  will  wish  posterity  to  remem 
ber."  We  can  easily  pardon  the  vanity  which 
wishes  and  hopes  that  such  an  answer,  given 
under  such  conditions,  may  be  remembered. 
Indeed,  Benton's  attitude  throughout  all  this 
period  should  never  be  forgotten  ;  and  the  words 
he  spoke  in  answer  to  Calhoun  marked  him  as 
the  leader  among  those  Southerners  who  held 
the  nation  above  any  section  thereof,  even  their 
own,  and  whose  courage  and  self-sacrifice  in  the 
cause  of  the  Union  entitled  them  to  more  praise 
than  by  right  belongs  to  any  equal  number  of 
Northerners  ;  those  Southerners  who  in  the  civil 
war  furnished  Farragut,  Thomas,  Bristow,  and 
countless  others  as  loyal  as  they  were  brave. 
The  effect  of  Benton's  teachings  and  the  still 
remaining  influence  of  his  intense  personality 
did  more  than  aught  else  to  keep  Missouri 
within  the  Union,  when  her  sister  states  went 
out  of  it. 

Benton  always  regarded  much  of  the  slavery 


SLAVERY  IN  THE  NEW   TERRITORIES.    325 

agitation  in  the  South  as  being  political  in  char 
acter,  and  the  result  of  the  schemes  of  ambitious 
and  unscrupulous  leaders.  He  believed  that 
Calhoun  had  introduced  a  set  of  resolutions  that 
were  totally  uncalled  for,  simply  for  the  purpose 
of  carrying  a  question,  to  the  Slave  States  on 
which  they  could  be  formed  into  a  unit  against 
the  Free  States  ;  and  there  is  much  to  be  said  in 
support  of  his  view.  Certainly  the  resolutions 
mark  the  beginning  of  the  first  great  slavery 
agitation  throughout  the  Southern  States,  which 
was  engineered  and  guided  for  their  own  ends  by 
politicians  like  Jefferson  Davis.  These  resolu 
tions  were  absolutely  inconsistent  with  many  of 
Calhoun's  previous  declarations  ;  and  that  fact 
was  also  sharply  commented  on  by  Benton  in  his 
speeches  and  writings.  He  also  criticised  with 
caustic  severity  Calhoun's  statements  that  he 
wished  to  save  the  Union  by  forcing  the  North 
"to  take  a  position  so  agreeable  to  the  South 
as  to  make  the  latter  willing  not  to  separate. 
He  showed  that  Calhoun's  proposed  "  constitu 
tional  "  and  "  peaceable  "  methods  of  bringing 
this  about  by  prohibiting  commercial  inter 
course  between  the  two  sections  would  them 
selves  be  flagrant  breaches  of  the  Constitution 
and  acts  of  disunion, —  all  the  more  so  as  it  was 
proposed  to  discriminate  in  favor  of  the  North 
west  as  against  the  Northeast.  Calhoun  wished 


326  THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

to  bring  about  a  convention  of  the  Southern 
States,  in  order  to  secure  the  necessary  unity  of 
action ;  and  one  of  the  main  obstacles  to  the 
success  of  the  plan  was  Missouri's  refusal  to  take 
part  in  it.  Great  efforts  were  made  to  win  her 
over,  and  to  beat  down  Benton  ;  the  extreme 
pro-slavery  men  honoring  him  with  a  hatred 
more  intense  than  that  they  harbored  towards 
any  Northerner.  Some  of  Calhoun's  recent  bi 
ographers  have  credited  him  with  being  really  a 
Union  man  at  heart.  It  seems  absolutely  impos 
sible  that  this  could  have  been  the  case  ;  and 
the  supposition  is  certainly  not  compatible  with 
the  belief  that  he  retained  his  right  senses.  Ben- 
ton  characterizes  his  system  of  slavery  agitation, 
very  truthfully,  as  being  one  "  to  force  issues 
upon  the  North  under  the  pretext  of  self-de 
fense,  and  to  sectionalize  the  South,  prepara 
tory  to  disunion,  through  the  instrumentality  of 
sectional  conventions,  composed  wholly  of  dele 
gates  from  the  slave-holding  states." 

When  the  question  of  the  admission  of  Ore 
gon  came  up,  Calhoun  attempted  to  apply  to  it 
a  dogma  wholly  at  variance  with  all  his  former 
positions  on  the  subject.  This  was  the  theory 
of  the  self-extension  of  the  slavery  part  of  the 
Constitution  to  the  territories;  that  is,  he  held 
that  the  exclusion  of  slavery  from  any  part  of 
the  new  territory  was  itself  a  subversion  of  the 


SLAVERY  IN  THE  NEW  TERRITORIES.    327 

Constitution.  Such  a  dogma  was  so  monstrous 
in  character,  so  illogical,  so  inconsistent  with  all 
his  former  theories,  and  so  absolutely  incompat 
ible  with  the  preservation  of  the  Union,  that  it 
renders  it  impossible  to  believe  that  his  assev 
erations  of  devotion  to  the  latter  were  uttered 
honestly  or  in  good  faith.  Most  modern  readers 
will  agree  with  Benton  that  he  deliberately 
worked  to  bring  about  secession. 

Meanwhile  the  Missourian  had  gained  an  ally 
of  his  own  stamp  in  the  Senate.  This  was 
Houston,  from  the  new  State  of  Texas,  who  rep 
resented  in  that  state,  like  Andrew  Jackson  in 
Tennessee,  and  Benton  himself  in  Missouri,  the 
old  Nationalist  Democracy,  which  held  the 
preservation  of  the  Union  dear  above  all  other 
things.  Houston  was  a  man  after  Benton's 
own  heart,  and  was  thoroughly  Jacksonian  in 
type.  He  was  rough,  honest,  and  fearless,  a 
devoted  friend  and  a  vengeful  enemy,  and  he 
promised  that  combination  of  stubborn  courage 
and  capacity  of  devotion  to  an  ideal  that  ren 
ders  a  man  an  invaluable  ally  in  a  fight  against 
odds  for  principle. 

After  much  discussion  and  amendment,  the 
Oregon  bill,  containing  a  radical  anti-slavery 
clause,  passed  both  houses  and  became  a  law  in 
spite  of  the  violent  opposition  of  some  of  the 
Southerners,  headed  by  Calhoun,  who  announced 


328        THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

that  the  great  strife  between  the  North  and  the 
South  was  ended,  and  that  the  time  had  come 
for  the  South  to  show  that,  though  she  prized 
the  Union,  yet  there  were  matters  which  she 
regarded  as  of  greater  importance  than  its 
preservation.  His  ire  was  most  fiercely  excited 
by  the  action  of  Benton  and  Houston  in  sup 
porting  the  bill,  and  after  his  return  to  South 
Carolina  he  denounced  them  by  name  as  traitors 
to  the  South,  —  "a  denunciation,"  says  Benton, 
"which  they  took  for  a  distinction  ;  as  what  he 
called  treason  to  the  South  they  knew  to  be  al 
legiance  to  the  Union."  When  it  was  proposed 
to  extend  by  bill  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  into  the  territories,  with  a  view  to  car 
rying  slavery  into  California,  Utah,  and  New 
Mexico,  Benton  was  again  opposed  to  Calhoun. 
As  a  matter  of  course,  too,  he  was  the  stoutest 
opponent  of  the  Southern  convention  and  other 
similar  disunion  movements  that  were  begin 
ning  to  take  shape  throughout  the  South,  insti 
gated  by  the  two  rank  secession  states  of  South 
Carolina  and  Mississippi. 

Most  of  the  momentous  questions  springing 
out  of  the  war  with  Mexico  were  left  by  Polk 
as  legacies  to  his  successor,  when  the  former 
went  out  of  office,  after  an  administration  that 
Benton  criticised  with  extreme  sharpness,  al 
though  he  tried  to  shield  the  president  by  cast- 


SLAVERY  IN  THE  NEW  TERRITORIES.     329 

ing  the  blame  for  his  actions  upon  bis  cabinet 
advisers  ;  characterizing  tbe  Mexican  War  as 
one  of  "speculation  and  intrigue,"  and  as  the 
44  great  blot  "  of  his  four  years'  term  of  office, 
and  ridiculing  the  theory  that  we  were  acting 
in  self-defense,  or  that  our  soil  had  been  in 
vaded.  In  1848  the  Democrats  nominated 
Cass,  a  Northern  pro-slavery  politician  of  moder 
ate  abilities,  and  the  Whigs  put  up  and  elected 
old  Zachary  Taylor,  the  rough  frontier  soldier 
and  Louisiana  slave-holder.  The  political  Abo 
litionists  again  took  a  hand  in  the  contest,  but 
this  time  abandoned  their  abolition  theories, 
substituting  instead  thereof  the  prohibition  of 
slavery  in  the  new  territories.  They  derived 
much  additional  importance  from  their  alliance 
with  a  disappointed  politician  in  the  pivotal 
State  of  New  York ;  and  in  this  case,  in  sharp 
contrast  to  the  result  in  1844,  their  actions 
worked  good,  and  not  evil.  Van  Buren,  cha 
grined  and  angered  by  the  way  he  was  treated 
by  the  regular  Democrats,  organized  a  revolt 
against  them,  and  used  the  banner  of  the  new 
Free  Soil  party  as  one  under  which  to  rally  his 
adherents.  This  movement  was  of  consequence 
mainly  in  New  York,  and  there  it  soon  became 
little  more  than  a  mere  fight  between  the  two 
sections  of  the  Democracy.  Benton  himself 
visited  this  all-important  state  to  try  to  patch 


830  THOMAS   HART  BE  NT  ON. 

up  matters,  but  he  fortunately  failed.  The  fac 
tions  proved  very  nearly  equal  in  strength ;  and 
as  a  consequence  the  Whigs  carried  the  state 
and  the  election,  and  once  more  held  the  reins 
of  government. 

When  a  Louisiana  slave-holder  was  thus  in 
stalled  in  the  White  House,  the  extreme  South 
ern  men  may  have  thought  that  they  were  sure 
of  him  as  an  ally  in  their  fight  against  freedom. 
But,  if  so,  they  soon  found  they  had  reckoned 
without  their  host,  for  the  election  of  Taylor 
affords  a  curious,  though  not  solitary,  instance 
in  which  the  American  people  builded  better 
than  they  knew  in  choosing  a  chief  executive. 
Nothing  whatever  was  known  of  his  political 
theories,  and  the  Whigs  nominated  him  simply 
because  he  was  a  successful  soldier,  likely  to  take 
the  popular  fancy.  But  once  elected  he  turned 
out  to  have  the  very  qualities  we  then  most 
needed  in  a  president,  —  a  stout  heart,  shrewd 
common  sense,  and  thorough-goiiTg  devotion  to 
the  Union.  Although  with  widely  different 
training  from  Benton,  and  nominally  differing 
from  him  in  politics,  he  was  yet  of  the  same 
stamp  both  in  character  and  principles  ;  both 
were  Union  Southerners,  not  in  the  least  afraid 
of  openly  asserting  their  opinions,  and,  if  neces 
sary,  of  making  them  good  by  their  acts.  In 
his  first  and  only  annual  message,  Taylor  ex- 


SLAVERY  IN  THE  NEW   TERRITORIES,      331 

pressed,  upon  all  the  important  questions  of  the 
day,  views  that  were  exactly  similar  to  those 
advanced  before  or  after  by  Benton  himself  in 
the  Senate  ;  and  he  used  similar  emphasis  and 
plainness  of  speech.  He  declared  the  Union  to 
be  the  greatest  of  blessings,  which  he  would 
maintain  in  every  way  against  whatever  dan 
gers  might  threaten  it  ;  he  advised  the  admis 
sion  of  California,  which  wished  to  come  in 
as  a  free  state  ;  he  thought  that  the  territories 
of  Utah  and  New  Mexico  should  be  left  as  they 
were;  and  he  warned  the  Texans,  who  were 
blustering  about  certain  alleged  rights  to  New 
Mexican  soil,  and  threatening  to  take  them  by 
force  of  arms,  that  this  could  not  be  permitted, 
and  that  the  matter  would  have  to  be  settled 
by  the  judicial  authority  of  the  United  States. 
Benton  heartily  indorsed  the  message.  Natu 
rally,  it  was  bitterly  assailed  by  the  disunionists 
under  Calhoun ;  and  even  Clay,  who  entirely 
lacked  Taylor's  backbone,  was  dissatisfied  with 
it  as  being  too  extreme  in  tone,  and  conflicting 
with  his  proposed  compromise  measures.  These 
same  compromise  measures  brought  the  Ken 
tucky  leader  into  conflict  with  Benton  also,  es 
pecially  on  the  point  of  their  interfering  with 
the  immediate  admission  of  California  into  the 
Union. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  discuss  Clay's  pro- 


332         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

posed  compromise,  which  was  not  satisfactory  to 
the  extreme  Southerners,  and  still  less  so  to  the 
Unionists  and  anti-slavery  men.  It  consisted 
of  five  different  parts,  relating  to  the  recovery 
of  fugitive  slaves,  the  suppression  of  the  slave- 
trade  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  the  admis 
sion  of  California  as  a  state,  and  the  territorial 
condition  of  Utah  and  New  Mexico.  Benton 
opposed  it  as  mixing  up  incongruous  measures ; 
as  being  unjust  to  California,  inasmuch  as  it 
confounded  the  question  of  her  admission  with 
the  general  slavery  agitation  in  the  United 
States;  and  above  all  as  being  a  concession  or 
capitulation  to  the  spirit  of  disunion  and  seces 
sion,  and  therefore  a  repetition  of  the  error  of 
1833.  Benton  always  desired  to  meet  and  check 
any  disunion  movement  at  the  very  outset,  and, 
if  he  had  had  his  way,  would  have  carried  mat 
ters  with  a  high  hand  whenever  it  came  to  deal 
ing  with  threats  of  such  a  proceeding ;  and 
therein  he  was  perfectly  right.  In  regard  to 
the  proposed  compromise  he  believed  in  dealing 
with  each  question  as  it  arose,  beginning  with 
the  admission  of  California,  and  refusing  to 
have  any  compromise  at  all  with  those  who 
threatened  secession. 

The  slavery  extensionists  endeavored  to  have 
the  Missouri  compromise  line  stretched  on  to 
the  Pacific.  Benton,  avowing  his  belief  that 


SLAVERY  IN  THE  NEW  TERRITORIES.     333 

slu very  was  an  evil,  opposed  this,  and  gave  his 
reasons  why  he  did  not  wish  to  see  the  line 
which  had  been  used  to  divide  free  and  slave 
soil  in  the  French  or  Louisiana  purchase  ex 
tended  into  the  lands  won  from  Mexico.  Slav 
ery  had  always  existed  in  Louisiana,  while 
it  had  been  long  abolished  in  Mexico.  "  The 
Missouri  compromise  line,  extending  to  New 
Mexico  and  California,  though  astronomically 
the  same  as  that  in  Louisiana,  would  be  polit 
ically  directly  the  opposite.  One  went  through 
a  territory  all  slave,  and  made  one  half  free ; 
the  other  would  go  through  territory  all  free, 
and  make  one  half  slave."  In  fact  Benton,  as 
he  grew  older,  unlike  most  of  his  compatriots, 
gained  a  clearer  insight  into  the  effects  of  slav 
ery.  This  was  shown  in  his  comments  upon 
Calhoun's  statement,  made  in  the  latter's  last 
speech,  in  reference  to  the  unequal  development 
of  the  North  and  South  ;  which,  Benton  said, 
was  partly  owing  to  the  existence  of  "  slavery 
itself,  which  he  (Calhoun)  was  so  anxious  to 
extend."  It  was  in  this  same  speech  that  Cal 
houn  hinted  at  his  plan  for  a  dual  executive,  — 
one  president  from  the  Free  and  one  from  the 
Slave  States,  —  a  childish  proposition,  that  Ben- 
ton  properly  treated  as  a  simple  absurdity. 

In  his  speech  against  the  compromise,  Benton 
discussed  it,  section  by  section,,  with  great  force, 


334         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

and  with  his  usual  blunt  truthfulness.  His 
main  count  was  the  injustice  done  to  California 
by  delaying  her  admittance,  and  making  it  de 
pendent  upon  other  issues  ;  but  he  made  almost 
as  strong  a  point  against  the  effort  to  settle  the 
claims  of  Texas  to  New  Mexican  territory.  The 
Texan  threats  to  use  force  he  treated  with 
cavalier  indifference,  remarking  that  as  long  as 
New  Mexico  was  a  territory,  and  therefore  be 
longed  to  the  United  States,  any  controversy 
with  her  was  a  controversy  with  the  federal 
government,  which  would  know  how  to  play 
her  part  by  "  defending  "her  territory  from  in 
vasion,  and  her  people  from  violence,"  —  a 
hint  that  had  a  salutary  effect  upon  the  Tex- 
ans  ;  in  fact  the  disunionists,  generally,  were 
not  apt  to  do  much  more  thaii  threaten  while  a 
Whig  like  Taylor  was  backed  up  by  a  Democrat 
like  Benton.  He  also  pointed  out  that  it  was 
not  necessary,  however  desirable,  to  make  a 
compact  with  Texas  about  the  boundaries,  as 
they  could  always  be  settled,  whether  she 
wished  it  or  not,  by  a  suit  before  the  Supreme 
Court;  and  again  intimated  that  a  little  show  of 
firmness  would  remove  all  danger  of  a  collision. 
"  As  to  anything  that  Texas  or  New  Mexico 
may  do  in  taking  or  relinquishing  possession, 
that  is  all  moonshine.  New  Mexico  is  the 
property  of  the  United  States,  and  she  cannot 


SLAVERY  IN  THE  NEW  TERRITORIES.     335 

dispose  of  herself  or  any  part  of  herself,  nor  can 
Texas  take  her  or  any  part  of  her."  He  showed 
a  thorough  acquaintance  with  New  Mexican 
geography  and  history,  and  alluded  to  the  bills 
he  had  already  brought  in,  in  1844  and  1850, 
to  establish  a  divisional  line  between  the  terri 
tory  and  Texas,  on  the  longitude  first  of  one 
hundred  and  then  of  one  hundred  and  two  de 
grees.  He  recalled  the  fact  that  before  the 
annexation  of  Texas,  and  in  a  bill  proposing  to 
settle  all  questions  with  her,  he  had  inserted  a 
provision  forever  prohibiting  slavery  in  all  parts 
of  the  annexed  territory  lying  west  of  the  hun 
dredth  degree  of  longitude.  He  also  took  the 
opportunity  of  formally  stating  his  opposition 
to  any  form  of  slavery  extension,  remarking 
that  it  was  no  new  idea  with  him,  but  dated 
from  the  time  when  in  1804,  while  a  law  stu 
dent  in  Tennessee,  he  had  studied  Blackstone 
as  edited  by  the  learned  Virginian,  Judge 
Tucker,  who,  in  an  appendix,  treated  of,  and 
totally  condemned,  black  slavery  in  the  United 
States.  The  very  difficulty,  or,  as  he  deemed 
it,  the  impossibility,  of  getting  rid  of  the  evil, 
made  Benton  all  the  more  determined  in  op 
posing  its  extension.  "The  incurability  of  the 
evil  is  the  greatest  objection  to  the  extension 
of  slavery.  If  it  is  wrong  for  the  legislator  to 
inflict  an  evil  which  can  be  cured,  how  much. 


336  THOMAS  HART  BEN  TON. 

more  to  inflict  one  that  is  incurable,  and  against 
the  will  of  the  people  who  are  to  endure  it  for 
ever  !  I  quarrel  with  no  one  for  deeming  slavery 
a  blessing ;  I  deem  it  an  evil,  and  would  neither 
adopt  it  nor  impose  it  on  others."  The  solution 
of  the  problem  of  disposing  of  existent  slavery, 
he  confessed,  seemed  beyond  human  wisdom; 
but  "  there  is  a  wisdom  above  human,  and  to 
that  we  must  look.  In  the  mean  time,  do  not 
extend  the  evil."  In  justification  of  his  position 
he  quoted  previous  actions  of  Congress,  done 
under  the  lead  of  Southern  men,  in  refusing 
again  and  again,  down  to  1807,  to  allow  slavery 
to  be  introduced  into  Indiana,  when  that  com 
munity  petitioned  for  it.  He  also  repudiated 
strongly  the  whole  spirit  in  which  Clay  had 
gotten  up  his  compromise  bill,  stating  that  he 
did  not  believe  in  geographical  parties ;  that  he 
knew  no  North  and  no  South,  and  utterly  re 
jected  any  slavery  compromises  except  those 
to  be  found  in  the  Constitution.  Altogether 
it  was  a  great  speech,  and  his  opposition  was 
one  of  the  main  causes  of  the  defeat  of  Clay's 
measure. 

Benton's  position  on  the  Wilmot  Proviso  is 
worth  giving  in  his  own  words :  "That  meas 
ure  was  rejected  again  as  heretofore,  and  by 
the  votes  of  those  who  were  opposed  to  extend 
ing  slavery  into  the  territories,  because  it  was 


SLAVERY  IN  THE  NEW   TERRITORIES.    337 

unnecessary  and  inoperative, — irritating  to  the 
Slave  States,  without  benefit  to  the  Free  States, 
aTinere  work  of  supererogation,  of  which  the 
fruit  was  discontent.  It  was  rejected,  not  on 
the  principle  of  non-intervention  ;  not  on  the 
principle  of  leaving  to  the  territories  to  do  as 
they  pleased  on  the  question,  but  because  there 
had  been  intervention ;  because  Mexican  law 
and  constitution  had  intervened,  had  abolished 
slavery  by  law  in  those  dominions ;  which  law 
would  remain  in  force  until  repealed  by  Con 
gress.  All  that  the  opponents  to  the  exten 
sion  of  slavery  had  to  do,  then,  was  to  do  noth 
ing.  And  they  did  nothing." 

Before  California  was  admitted  into  the 
Union  old  Zachary  Taylor  had  died,  leaving 
behind  him  a  name  that  will  always  be  re 
membered  among  our  people.  He  was  neither 
a  great  statesman  nor  yet  a  great  commander ; 
but  he  was  an  able  and  gallant  soldier,  a  loyal 
and  upright  public  servant,  and  a  most  kindly, 
honest,  and  truthful  man.  His  death  was  a 
greater  loss  to  the  country  than  perhaps  the 
people  ever  knew. 

The  bill  for  the  admission  of  California  as 
a  free  state,  heartily  sustained  by  Benton,  was 
made  a  test  question  by  the  Southern  disunion- 
ists  ;  but  on  this  occasion  they  were  thoroughly 
beaten.  The  great  struggle  was  made  over  a 
22 


338  THOMAS  HART  BEN  TON. 

proposition  to  limit  the  southern  boundary  of 
the  state  to  the  line  of  36°  30',  and  to  extend 
the  Missouri  line  through  to  the  Pacific,  so 
as  to  authorize  the  existence  of  slavery  in  all 
the  territory  south  of  that  latitude.  This  was 
defeated  by  a  vote  of  thirty-two  to  twenty- 
four.  Not  only  Benton,  but  also  Spruance  and 
Wales  of  Delaware,  and  Underwood  of  Ken 
tucky,  joined  with  the  representatives  from 
the  Free  States  in  opposing  it.  Had  it  not 
been  for  the  action  of  these  four  slave-state 
senators  in  leaving  their  associates,  the  vote 
would  have  been  a  tie  ;  and  their  courage  and 
patriotism  should  be  remembered.  The  bill 
was  then  passed  by  a  vote  of  thirty-four  to 
eighteen,  two  other  Southern  senators,  Hous 
ton  of  Texas,  and  Bell  of  Tennessee,  voting 
for  it,  in  addition  to  the  four  already  men 
tioned.  After  its  passage,  ten  of  the  senators 
who  had  voted  against  it.  including,  of  course, 
Jefferson  Davis,  and  also  Benton's  own  col 
league  from  Missouri,  Atchison,  joined  in  a 
protest  against  what  had  been  done,  ending 
with  a  thinly  veiled  threat  of  disunion, —  "dis 
solution  of  the  confederacy,"  as  they  styled  it. 
Benton  stoutly  and  successfully  opposed  allow 
ing  this  protest  to  be  received  or  entered  upon 
the  journal,  condemning  it,  with  a  frankness 
that  very  few  of  his  fellow-senators  would  have 


SLAVERY  JN  THE  NEW  TERRITORIES.    339 

dared  to  copy,  as  being  sectional  and  disunion 
in  form,  and  therefore  unfit  even  for  preserva 
tion  on  the  records. 

When  the  Fugitive  Slave  Act  of  1850  was 
passed,  through  the  help  of  some  Northern 
votes,  Benton  refused  to  support  it;  and  this 
was  the  last  act  of  importance  that  he  performed 
as  United"  States  Senator.  He  had  risen  and 
grown  steadily  all  through  his  long  term  of  ser 
vice  ;  and  during  its  last  period  he  did  greater 
service  to  the  nation  than  any  of  his  fellow- 
senators.  Compare  his  stand  against  the  slav 
ery  extremists  and  disunionists,  such  as  Cal- 
houn,  with  the  position  of  Webster  at  the  time 
of  his  famori^  seventh  of  March  speech,  or  with 
that  of  Clay 'when  he  brought  in  his  compro 
mise  bill !  In  fact,  as  the  times  grew  more 
troublesome,  he  grew  steadily  better  able  to  do 
good  work  in  them. 

It  is  this  fact  of  growth  that  especially  marks 
his  career.  No  other  American  statesman,  ex 
cept  John  Quincy  Adams, — •  certainly  neither 
of  his  great  contemporaries,  Webster  and  Clay, 
. —  kept  doing  continually  better  work  through 
out  his  term  of  public  service,  or  showed  him 
self  able  to  rise  to  a  higher  level  at  the  very 
end  than  at  the  beginning.  Yet  such  was  the 
case  with  Benton.  He  always  rose  to  meet  a 
really  great  emergency  ;  and  his  services  to  the 


340         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

nation  grew  steadily  in  importance  to  the  very 
close  of  bis  life.  Whereas  Webster  and  Clay 
passed  their  zenith  and  fell,  he  kept  rising  all 
the  time. 


CHAPTER   XV. 
THE  LOSING  FIGHT. 

BENTON  had  now  finished  his  fifth  and  last 
term  in  the  United  States  Senate.  He  had 
been  chosen  senator  from  Missouri  before  she 
was  admitted  into  the  Union,  and  had  remained 
such  for  thirty  years.  During  all  that  time  the 
state  had  been  steadily  Democratic,  the  large 
Whig  minority  never  being  able  to  get  control ; 
but  on  the  question  of  the  extension  of  slavery 
the  dominant  party  itself  began  at  this  time  to 
break  into  two  factions.  Hitherto  Benton  had 
been  the  undisputed  leader  of  the  Democracy, 
but  now  the  pro-slavery  and  disunionist  Demo 
crats  organized  a  very  powerful  opposition  to 
him ;  while  he  still  received  the  enthusiastic 
support  of  an  almost  equally  numerous  body  of 
followers.  Although  the  extension  of  slavery 
and  the  preservation  of  the  Union  were  the  two 
chief  and  vital  points  on  which  the  factions  dif 
fered,  yet  the  names  by  which  they  designated 
each  other  were  adopted  in  consequence  of 
their  differing  also  on  a  third  and  only  less  im- 


842  THOMAS  HART  BENT  ON. 

portant  one.  Benton  was  such  a  firm  believer 
in  hard  money,  and  a  currency  of  gold  and 
silver,  as  to  have  received  the  nickname  of 
"  Old  Bullion,"  and  his  followers  were  called 
"  hards  ;  "  his  opponents  were  soft  money  men, 
in  addition  to  being  secessionists  and  pro-slav 
ery  fanatics,  and  took  the  name  of  "  softs."  The 
principles  of  the  Bentonians  Avere  right,  and 
thoso  of  their  opponents  wrong  ;  but  for  all 
that  the  latter  gradually  gained  upon  the  for 
mer.  Finally,  in  the  midst  of  Benton's  fight 
against  the  extension  of  slavery  into  the  terri 
tories,  the  "softs"  carried  the  Missouri  legis 
lature,  and  passed  a  series  of  resolutions  based 
upon  those  of  Calhoun.  These  were  most  trucu 
lent  and  disloyal  in  tone,  demanding  that  slav 
ery  be  permitted  to  exist  in  all  the  new  states 
to  be  admitted,  and  instructing  their  senators  to 
vote  accordingly.  These  resolutions  were  pre 
sented  in  the  senate  by  Benton's  colleague  from 
'Missouri,  Atchison,  who  was  rather  hostile  to 
him  and  to  every  other  friend  of  the  Union, 
and  later  on  achieved  disreputable  notoriety  as 
a  leader  of  the  u  border  ruffians  "  in  the  affrays 
on  the  'soil  of  Kansas.  Benton  at  once  picked 
up  the  glove  that  had  been  flung  down.  He 
utterly  refused  to  obey  the  resolutions,  de 
nounced  them  savagely  as  being  treasonable 
and  offensive  in  the  highest  degree,  asserted  that 


THE  LOSING  FIGHT.  343 

they  did  not  express  the  true  opinions  of  the 
voters  of  the  state,  and  appealed  from  the 
Missouri  legislature  to  the  Missouri  people. 

The  issue  between  the  two  sides  was  now 
sharply  brought  out,  and,  as  this  took  place 
towards  the  end  of  Benton's  fifth  term,  the 
struggle  to  command  the  legislature  which 
should  reelect  him  or  give  him  a  successor 
was  most  exciting.  Benton  himself  took  an 
active  .part  in  the  preliminary  canvass.  Nei 
ther  faction  was  able  to  get  a  majority  of  the 
members,  and  the  deadlock  was  finally  broken 
by  the  "  softs  "  coming  to  the  support  of  ihe 
Whigs,  and  helping  them  to  elect  Benton's 
rival.  Thus,  after  serving  his  state  faithfully 
and  ably  for  thirty  years,  he  was  finally  turned 
out  of  the  position  which  he  so  worthily  filled, 
because  he  had  committed  the  crime  of  stand 
ing  loyally  by  the  Union. 

But  the  stout  old  Nationalist  was  not  in  the 
least  cast  down  or  even  shaken  by  his  defeat.* 
He  kept  up  the  fight  as  bitterly  as  ever,  though 
now  an  old  man,  and  in  1852  went  to  Con 
gress  as  a  representative  Union  Democrat. 
For  thirty  years  he  had  been  the  autocrat  of 
Missouri  politics,  and  had  at  one  time  wielded 
throughout  his  own  state  a  power  as  great  as 
Calhoun  possessed  in  South  Carolina ;  greater 
than  Webster  held  in  Massachusetts,  or  Clay 


344  THOMAS  HART  BE  NT  ON. 

in  Kentucky.  But  the  tide  which  had  so  long 
flowed  in  his  favor  now  turned,  and  for  the 
few  remaining  years  of  his  life  set  as  steadily 
against  him ;  yet  at  no  time  of  his  long  pub 
lic  career  did  he  stand  forth  as  honorably  and 
prominently  as  during  his  last  days,  when  he 
was  showing  so  stern  a  front  to  his  victorious 
foes.  His  love  for  work  was  so  great  that, 
when  out  of  the  Senate,  he  did  not  find  even 
his  incessant  political  occupations  enough  for 
him.  During  Ms  contest  for  the  senatorship 
his  hands  had  been  full,  for  he  had  spoken 
again  and  again  throughout  the  entire  state, 
his  carefully  prepared  speeches  showing  re 
markable  power,  and  filled  with  scathing  de 
nunciation  and  invective,  and  biting  and  caustic 
sarcasm.  But  so  soon  as  his  defeat  was  assured 
he  turned  his  attention  immediately  to  liter 
ature,  setting  to  work  on  his  great  "  Thirty 
Years'  View,"  of  which  the  first  volume  was 
printed  during  his  congressional  term,  and  was 
quoted  on  the  floor  of  the  House,  both  by  his 
friends  and  foes,  during  the  debates  in  which 
he  was  taking  part. 

In  1852,  when  he  was  elected  to  Congress 
as  a  member  of  the  House,  he  had  supported 
Pierce  for  the  presidency  against  Scott,  a  good 
general,  but  otherwise  a  wholly  absurd  and 
flatulent  personage,  who  was  the  Whig  nom- 


THE  LOSING  FIGHT.  345 

inee.  But  it  soon  became  evident  that  Pierce 
was  completely  under  the  control  of  the  se 
cession  wing  of  the  party,  and  Benton  there- 
afterwards  treated  him  with  contemptuous  hos 
tility,  despising  him,  and  seeing  him  exactly 
as  he  was,  —  a  small  politician,  of  low  capacity 
and  mean  surroundings,  proud  to  act  as  the 
servile  tool  of  men  worse  than  himself  but 
also  stronger  and  abler.  He  was  ever  ready 
to  do  any  work  the  slavery  leaders  set  him, 
and  to  act  as  their  attorney  in  arguing  in  its 
favor,  —  to  quote  Benton's  phrase,  with  "  un 
daunted  mendacity,  moral  callosity  [and]  men 
tal  obliquity."  His  last  message  to  Congress  in 
the  slavery  interest  Benton  spoke  of  as  char 
acteristic,  and  exemplifying  "  all  the  modes  of 
conveying  untruths  which  long  ages  have  in 
vented, —  direct  assertion,  fallacious  inference, 
equivocal  phrase,  and  false  innuendo."  As  he 
entertained  such  views  of  the  head  of  the  Dem 
ocratic  party,  and  as  this  same  head  was  in 
hearty  accord  with,  and  a  good  representative 
of  the  mass  of  the  rank  and  file  politicians  of 
the  organization,  it  is  small  wonder  that  Ben- 
ton  found  himself,  on  every  important  ques 
tion  that  came  up  while  he  was  in  Congress, 
opposed  to  the  mass  of  his  fellow-Democrats. 
Although  the  great  questions  to  which  he 
devoted  himself,  while  a  representative  in  Con- 


346         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

gress,  were  those  relating  to  the  extension  of 
slavery,  yet  he  also  found  time  to  give  to 
certain  other  subjects,  working  as  usual  with 
indomitable  energy,  and  retaining  his  marvel 
ous  memory  to  the  last.  The  idea  of  despond 
ing  or  giving  up,  for  any  cause  whatever,  sim 
ply  never  entered  his  head.  When  his  house, 
containing  all  the  manuscript  and  papers  of  the 
nearly  completed  second  volume  of  his  "  Thirty 
Years'  View,"  was  burned  up,  he  did  not  de 
lay  a  minute  in  recommencing  his  work,  and 
the  very  next  day  spoke  in  Congress  as  usual. 

His  speeches  were  showing  a  steady  improve 
ment  ;  they  were  not  masterpieces,  even  at  the 
last,  but  in  every  way,  especially  in  style,  they 
were  infinitely  superior  to  those  that  he  had  made 
on  his  first  entrance  into  public  life.  Of  course,  a 
man  with  his  intense  pride  in  his  country,  and 
characterized  by  such  a  desire  to  see  her  become 
greater  and  more  united  in  every  way,  would 
naturally  support  the  proposal  to  build  a  Pacific 
Railroad,  and  accordingly  he  argued  for  it  at  great 
length  and  with  force  and  justness,  at  the  same 
time  opposing  the  propositions  to  build  northern 
and  southern  trans-continental  roads  as  substi 
tutes  for  the  proposed  central  route.  He  showed 
the  character  of  the  land  through  which  the 
road  would  run,  and  the  easiness  of  the  passes 
across  the  Rockies,  and  prophesied  a  rapid  in- 


THE  LOSING  FIGHT.  347 

crease  of  states  as  one  of  the  results  attendant 
upon  its  building.  At  the  end  of  his  speech  lie 
made  an  elaborate  comparison  of  the  courses  of 
trade  and  commerce  at  different  periods  of  the 
world's  history,  and  showed  that,  as  we  had 
reached  the  Pacific  coast,  we  had  finally  taken 
a  position  where  our  trade  with  the  Oriental 
kingdoms,  backed  up  by  our  own  enormous  in 
ternal  development,  rendered  us  more  than  ever 
independent  of  Europe. 

In  another  speech  he  discussed  very  intelli 
gently,  and  with  his  usual  complete  command  of 
the  facts  of  the  case,  some  of  the  contemporary 
Indian  uprisings  in  the  far  West.  He  attacked 
our  whole  Indian  policy,  showing  that  the  cor 
ruption  of  the  Indian  agents,  coupled  with  as 
tute  aggressions,  were  the  usual  causes  of  our 
wars.  Further,  he  criticised  our  regular  troops 
as  being  unfit  to  cope  with  the  savages,  and  ad 
vocated  the  formation  of  companies  of  frontier 
rangers,  who  should  also  be  settlers,  and  should 
receive  from  the  government  a  bounty  in  land 
as  part  reward  for  their  service.  Many  of  his 
remarks  on  our  Indian  policy  apply  quite  as 
well  now  as  they  did  then,  and  our  regular  sol 
diers  are  certainly  not  the  proper  opponents  for 
the  Indians ;  but  Benton's  military  views  were, 
as  a  rule,  the  reverse  of  sensible,  and  we  cannot 
accept  his  denunciations  of  the  army,  and  espe- 


348  THOMAS  HART  BEN  TON. 

cially  of  West  Point,  as  being  worth  serious  con 
sideration.  His  belief  in  the  marvelous  efficacy 
of  a  raw  militia,  especially  as  regards  war  with 
European  powers,  was  childish,  and  much  of  his 
feeling  against  the  regular  army  officer  was  dic 
tated  by  jealousy.  He  was,  by  all  the  peculiar 
ities  of  his  habits  and  education,  utterly  unfitted 
for  military  command ;  and  it  would  have  been 
an  evil  day  for  his  good  fame  if  Polk  had  suc 
ceeded  in  having  him  made  lieutenant-general  of 
our  forces  in  Mexico. 

His  remarks  upon  our  Indian  policy  were  not 
the  only  ones  he  made  that  would  bear  study 
even  yet.  Certain  of  his  speeches  upon  the  dif 
ferent  land-bounty  and  pension  bills,  passed 
nominally  in  the  interests  of  veterans,  but  really 
through  demagogy  and  the  machination  of  spec 
ulators,  could  be  read  with  profit  by  not  a  few 
Congressmen  at  the  present  time.  One  of  his 
utterances  was :  "  I  am  a  friend  to  old  soldiers 
.  .  .  but  not  to  old  speculators  ;  "  and  while  fa 
voring  proper  pension  bills  he  showed  the  fool 
ishness  and  criminality  of  certain  others  very 
clearly,  together  with  the  fact  that,  when  passed 
long  after  the  services  have  been  rendered,  they 
always  fail  to  relieve  the  real  sufferers,  and 
work  in  the  interests  of  unworthy  outsiders. 

But  his  great  speech,  and  one  of  the  best  and 
greatest  that  he  ever  made,  was  the  one  in 


THE  LOSING  FIGHT.  349 

opposition  to  the  Kansas-Nebraska  bill,  which 
was  being  pushed  through  Congress  by  the  fire- 
eaters  and  their  Northern  pro-slavery  followers. 
His  own  position  upon  the  measure  was  best 
expressed  by  the  words  he  used  in  commenting 
on  the  remarks  of  a  Georgian  member:.44  He 
votes  as  a  Southern  man,  and  votes  sectionally ; 
I  also  am  a  Southern  man,  but  vote  nationally 
on  national  questions." 

The  Missouri  Compromise  of  1820  had  ex 
pressly  abolished  slavery  in  the  territory  out  of 
which  Kansas  and  Nebraska  were  carved.  By 
the  proposed  bill  this  compromise  was  to  be 
repealed,  and  the  famous  doctrine  of  non-inter 
vention,  or  44  squatter  sovereignty,"  was  to  take 
its  place,  the  people  of  each  territory  being 
allowed  to  choose  for  themselves  whether  they 
did  or  did  not  wish  slavery.  Benton  attacked 
the  proposal  with  all  the  strength  of  his  frank, 
open  nature  as  44  a  bungling  attempt  to  smug 
gle  slavery  into  the  territory,  and  throughout 
all  the  country,  up  to  the  Canada  line  and  out 
to  the  Rocky  Mountains."  He  showed  exhaust 
ively  the  real  nature  of  the  original  Missouri 
Compromise,  which,  as  he  said,  was  forced  by 
the  South  upon  the  North,  and  which  the  South 
now  proposed  to  repeal,  that  it  might  humiliate 
the  North  still  further.  The  compromise  of 
1820  was,  he  justly  contended,  right ;  it  was 


350         THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

like  the  original  compromises  of  the  Constitu 
tion,  by  which  the  Slave  States  were  admitted 
to  the  formation  of  the  Union  ;  no  greater  con 
cession  of  principle  was  involved  in  the  one  case 
than  in  the  other  ;  and,  had  either  compromise 
failed,  the  Union  would  not  now  be  in  existence. 
But  the  day  when  compromises  had  been  neces 
sary,  or  even  harmless,  had  passed.  The  time 
had  come  when  the  extension  of  slavery  was  to 
be  opposed  in  every  constitutional  way  ;  and  it 
was  an  outrage  to  propose  to  extend  its  domain 
by  repealing  all  that  part  of  a  compromise 
measure  which  worked  against  it,  when  the 
South  had  already  long  taken  advantage  of  such 
parts  of  the  law  as  worked  in  its  favor.  Said 
Benton :  "The  South  divided  and  took  half, 
and  now  it  will  not  do  to  claim  the  other  half." 
Exactly  as  a  proposition  to  destroy  the  slavery 
compromises  of  the  Constitution  would  be  an 
open  attempt  to  destroy  the  Union,  so,  he  said, 
the  attempt  to  abrogate  the  compromise  of  1820 
would  be  a  preparation  for  the  same  ending. 
"  I  have  stood  upon  the  Missouri  Compromise 
for  about  thirty  years,  and  mean  to  stand  upon 
it  to  the  end  of  my  life.  ...  [it  is]  a  binding 
covenant  upon  both  parties,  and  the  more  so 
upon  the  South,  as  she  imposed  it." 

The  squatter  sovereignty  theories  of  Douglas 
he  treated  with  deserved  ridicule,  laughing  at 


THE  LOSING  FIGHT.  351 

the  idea  that  the  territories  were  not  the  actual 
property  of  the  nation,  to  be  treated  as  the  lat- 
ter~wlshed^  and  having  none  of  the  rights  of 
sovereign  states  ;  and  he  condemned  even  more 
severely  the  theory  advanced  to  the  effect  that 
Congress  had  no  power  to  legislate  on  slavery 
in  the  territories.  Thus,  he  pointed  out  that 
to  admit  any  such  theories  was  directly  to  re 
verse  the  principles  upon  which  we  had  acted 
for  seventy  years  in  regard  to  the  various  terri 
tories  that  from  time  to  time  grew  to  such  size 
as  entitled  them  to  come  into  the  Union  as 
states.  After  showing  that  there  was  no  excuse 
for  bringing  in  the  bill  on  the  plea  of  settling 
the  slavery  question,  since  there  was  not  a  foot 
of  territory  in  the  United  States  where  the  sub 
ject  of  slavery  was  not  already  settled  by  law, 
he  closed  with  an  earnest  appeal  against  such  an 
attempt  to  break  up  the  Union  and  outrage  the 
North  by  forcing  slavery  into  a  land  where  its 
existence  was  already  forbidden  by  law.  His 
speech  exceeded  the  hour  allotted  to  it,  and 
he  was  allowed  to  go  on  only  by  the  courtesy 
of  a  member  from  Illinois,  who,  when  some  of 
the  Southerners  protested  against  his  being 
heard  farther,  gave  up  part  of  his  own  time  to 
the  grand  old  Missourian,  and  asked  the  House 
to  hear  him,  if  only  "  as  the  oldest  living  man 
in  Congress,  the  only  man  in  Congress  who  was 


352  T HO. M AS  HART  BEN  TON. 

present  at  the  passage  of  the  Missouri  Compro 
mise  bill."  Many  a  man  at  the  North,  ashamed 
and  indignant  at  seeing  the  politicians  of  his 
own  section  cower  at  the  crack  of  the  Southern 
whip,  felt  a  glow  of  sincere  gratitude  and  ad 
miration  for  the  rugged  Westerner,  who  so 
boldly  bade  defiance  to  the  ruling  slave  party 
that  held  the  reins  not  only  in  his  own  section, 
but  also  in  his  own  state,  and  to  oppose  which 
was  almost  certain  political  death. 

The  Gadsden  treaty  was  also  strongly  opposed 
and  condemned  by  Benton,  who  considered  it  to 
be  part  of  a  great  scheme  or  movement  in  the 
interests  of  the  slavery  disunionists,  of  which 
he  also  believed  the  Kansas-Nebraska  bill  to  be 
the  first  development,  —  the  "  thin  end  of  the 
wedge."  He  opposed  the  acquirement  even  of 
the  small  piece  of  territory  we  were  actually 
able  to  purchase  from  Mexico  ;  and  showed  good 
grounds  for  his  belief  that  the  administration, 
acting  as  usual  only  in  the  interest  of  the  seces 
sionists,  had  tried  to  get  enough  North-Mexican 
territory  to  form  several  new  states,  and  had 
also  attempted  to  purchase  Cuba,  both  efforts 
being  for  the  purpose  of  enabling  the  South 
either  to  become  again  dominant  in  the  Union 
or  else  to  set  up  a  separate  confederacy  of  her 
own.  For  it  must  be  kept  in  mind  that  Benton 
always  believed  that  the  Southern  disunion 


THE  LOS/XG  FIGHT.  353 

movements  were  largely  due  to  conspiracies 
among  ambitious  politicians,  who  used  the  slav 
ery  question  as  a  handle  by  which  to  influence 
the  mass  of  the  people.  This  view  has  certainly 
more  truth  in  it  than  it  is  now  the  fashion  to 
admit.  His  objection  to  the  actual  treaty  was 
mainly  based  on  its  having  been  done  by  the 
executive  without  the  consent  of  the  legislature, 
and  he  also  criticised  it  for  the  secrecy  with 
which  it  had  been  put  through.  In  bringing 
forward  the  first  objection,  however,  he  was 
confronted  with  Jefferson's  conduct  in  acquiring 
Louisiana,  which  he  endeavored,  not  very  suc 
cessfully,  to  show  had  nothing  in  common  with 
the  actions  of  Pierce,  who,  he  said,  simply  de 
manded  a  check  from  the  House  with  which  to 
complete  a  purchase  undertaken  on  his  own  re 
sponsibility. 

Throughout  his  congressional  term  of  service, 
Benton  acted  so  as  to  deserve  well  of  the  Union 
as  a  whole,  and  most  well  of  Missouri  in  partic 
ular.  But  he  could  not  stem  the  tide  of  folly 
and  madness  in  this  state,  and  was  defeated 
when  he  was  a  candidate  for  reelection.  The 
Whigs  had  now  disappeared  from  the  political 
arena,  and  the  Know-nothings  were  running 
through  their  short  and  crooked  lease  of  life  ; 
they  foolishly  nominated  a  third  candidate  in 
Benton's  district,  who  drew  off  enough  votes 

23 


354  THOMAS  HART  DEN  TON. 

from  him  to  enable  his  pro-slavery  Democratic 
competitor  to  win. 

No  sooner  had  he  lost  his  seat  in  Congress 
than  Benton,  indefatigable  as  ever,  set  to  work 
to  finish  his  "  Thirty  Years'  View,"  and  pro 
duced  the  second  volume  in  1856,  the  year  when 
he  made  his  last  attempt  to  regain  his  hold  in 
politics,  and  to  win  Missouri  back  to  the  old 
Union  standard.  Although  his  own  son-in-law, 
Fremont,  the  daring  western  explorer,  was  run 
ning  as  the  first  presidential  candidate  ever 
nominated  by  the  Republicans,  the  old  partisan 
voted  for  the  Democrat,  Buchanan.  He  did 
not  like  Buchanan,  considering  him  weak  and 
unsuitable,  but  the  Republican  party  he  be 
lieved  to  be  entirely  too  sectional  in  character 
for  him  to  give  it  his  support.  For  governor 
there  was  a  triangular  fight,  the  Know-noth 
ings  having  nominated  one  candidate,  the  seces 
sionist  Democrats  a  second,  while  Benton  him 
self  ran  as  the  choice  of  the  Union  Democracy. 
He  was  now  seventy  -  four  years  old,  but  his 
mind  was  as  vigorous  as  ever,  and  his  iron  will 
kept  up  a  frame  that  had  hardly  even  yet  be 
gun  to  give  way.  During  the  course  of  the 
campaign  he  traveled  throughout  the  state, 
going  in  all  twelve  hundred  miles,  and  mak 
ing  forty  speeches,  each  one  of  two  or  three 
hours'  length.  This  was  a  remarkable  feat  for 


THE  LOSING  FIGHT.  355 

so  old  a  man  ;  indeed,  it  has  very  rarely  been 
paralleled,  except  by  Gladstone's  recent  per 
formances.  The  vote  was  quite  evenly  divided 
between  the  three  candidates;  but  Ben  ton  came 
in  third,  and  the  extreme  pro -slavery  men 
carried  the  day.  After  this,  during  the  few 
months  of  life  he  yet  had  left,  he  did  not  again 
mingle  in  the  politics  of  Missouri. 

But  in  the  days  of  his  defeat  at  home,  the 
regard  and  respect  in  which  he  was  held  in  the 
other  states,  especially  at  the  North,  increased 
steadily  ;  and  in  the  fall  of  185G  lie  made  by 
request  a  lecturing  tour  in  New  England,  speak 
ing  on  the  danger  of  the  political  situation  and 
the  imperative  necessity  of  preserving  the 
Union,  which  he  now  clearly  saw  to  be  gravely 
threatened.  He  was  well  received,  for  the 
North  was  learning  to  respect  him,  and  he  had 
gotten  over  his  early  hostility  to  New  England, 
—  a  hostility  originally  shared  by  the  whole 
West.  The  New  Englanders  were  not  yet 
aware,  however,  of  the  importance  of  the  seces 
sion  movements,  and  paid  little  heed  to  the 
warnings  that  were  to  be  so  fully  justified  by 
the  events  of  the  next  few  years.  But  Benton, 
in  spite  of  his  great  age,  saw  distinctly  the 
changes  that  were  taking  place,  and  the  dan 
gers  that  were  impending,  — an  unusual  thing 
for  a  man  whose  active  life  has  already  been 
lived  out  under  widely  different  conditions. 


356  THOMAS  HART  BENT  ON. 

He  again  turned  his  attention  to  literature, 
and  produced  another  great  work,  the  "  Abridg 
ment  of  the  Debates  of  Congress  from  1787  to 
1856,"  in  sixteen  volumes,  besides  writing  a 
valuable  pamphlet  on  the  Dred  Scott  decision, 
which  he  severely  criticised.  The  amount  of 
labor  all  this  required  was  immense,  and  his 
health  completely  gave  way ;  yet  he  continued 
working  to  the  very  end,  dictating  the  closing 
portion  of  the  "  Abridgment  "  in  a  whisper  as 
he  lay  on  his  death-bed.  When  he  once  began 
to  fail  his  advanced  years  made  him  succumb 
rapidly ;  and  on  April  10,  1858,  he  died,  in 
the  city  of  Washington.  As  soon  as  the  news 
reached  Missouri,  a  great  revulsion  of  feeling 
took  place,  and  all  classes  of  the  people  united 
to  do  honor  to  the  memory  of  the  dead  states 
man,  realizing  that  they  had  lost  a  man  who 
towered  head  and  shoulders  above  both  friends 
and  foes.  The  body  was  taken  to  St.  Louis, 
and  after  lying  in  state  was  buried  in  Belle- 
fontaine  Cemetery,  more  than  forty  thousand 
people  witnessing  the  funeral.  All  the  public 
buildings  were  draped  in  mourning  ;  all  places 
of  business  were  closed,  and  the  flags  every 
where  were  at  half-mast.  Thus  at  the  very 
end  the  great  city  of  the  West  at  last  again 
paid  fit  homage  to  the  West's  mightiest  son. 

Benton's  most  important  writings  are  those 


THE  LOSING  FIGHT.  357 

mentioned  above.  The  "Thirty  Years'  View  " 
("a  history  of  the  working  of  the  American 
government  for  thirty  years,  from  1820  to 
1850  ")  will  always  be  indispensable  to  every 
student  of  American  history.  It  deals  with  the 
deeds  of  both  houses  of  Congress,  and  of  some 
of  the  higher  federal  officials  during  his  thirty 
years'  term  of  service  in  the  Senate,  and  is  val 
uable  alike  for  the  original  data  it  contains,  and 
because  it  is  so  complete  a  record  of  our  public 
life  at  that  time.  The  book  is  also  remarkable 
for  its  courteous  and  equable  tone,  even  towards 
bitter  personal  and  political  enemies.  It  shows 
a  vanity  on  the  part  of  the  author  that  is  too 
frank  and  free  from  malice  to  be  anything  but 
amusing ;  the  style  is  rather  ponderous,  and  the 
English  not  always  good,  for  Benton  began  life, 
and,  in  fact,  largely  passed  it,  in  an  age  of  or 
nate  periods,  when  grandiloquence  was  consid 
ered  more  essential  than  grammar.  In  much 
of  the  Mississippi  valley  the  people  had  their 
own  canons  of  literary  taste ;  indeed,  in  a  re 
cent  book  by  one  of  Benton's  admirers,  there  is 
a  fond  allusion  to  his  statement,  anent  the  ex 
punging  resolution,  that  "  solitary  and  alone  " 
he  had  set  the  ball  in  motion,  —  the  pleonasm 
being  evidently  looked  upon  in  the  light  of  a 
rather  fine  oratorical  outburst. 

"  The  Abridgment  of  the  Debates  of  Con- 


358         THOMAS  HART  BKNTON. 

gress  from  1789  to  1856  "  lie  was  onl}'  able  to 
bring  down  to  1850.  Sixteen  volumes  were 
published.  It  was  a  compilation  needing  infi 
nite  labor,  and  is  invaluable  to  the  historian. 
While  in  the  midst  of  the  vast  work  he  also 
found  time  to  write  his  "  Examination  of  the 
Dred  Scott  case,"  in  so  far  as  it  decided  the 
Missouri  Compromise  law  to  be  unconstitu 
tional,  and  asserted  the  self -extension  of  the 
Constitution  into  the  territories,  carrying  slav 
ery  with  it,  —  the  decision  in  this  case  pro 
mulgated  by  Judge  Taney,  of  unhappy  fame, 
having  been  the  last  step  taken  in  the  interests 
of  slavery  and  for  the  overthrow  of  freedom. 
The  pamphlet  contained  nearly  two  hundred 
pages,  and  showed,  as  was  invariably  the  case 
with  anything  Benton  did,  the  effects  of  labo 
rious  research  and  wide  historical  and  legal 
learning.  His  summing  up  was,  "  that  the  de 
cision  conflicts  with  tho  uniform  action  of  all 
the  departments  of  the  federal  government  from 
its  foundation  to  the  present  time,  and  cannot 
be  accepted  as  a  rule  to  govern  Congress  and 
the  people,  without  severing  that  act  and  ad 
mitting  the  political  supremacy  of  the  court 
and  accepting  an  altered  constitution  from  its 
hands,  and  taking  a  new  and  portentous  point 
of  departure  in  the  working  of  the  govern 
ment."  He  denounced  the  new  party  theories 


THE  LOSING  FIGHT.  359 

of  the  Democracy,  which  had  abandoned  the 
old  belief  of  the  founders  of  the  Republic,  that 
Congress  had  power  to  legislate  upon  slavery  in 
territories,  and  which  had  gone  on  "  from  the 
abrogation  of  the  Missouri  Compromise,  which 
saved  the  Union,  to  squatter  sovereignty,  which 
killed  the  compromise,  and  thence  to  the  de 
cisions  of  the  supreme  court,  which  kill  both." 
In  closing  he  touched  briefly  on  the  history 
of  the  pro -slavery  agitation.  "Up  to  Mr. 
Pierce's  administration  the  plan  had  been  de 
fensive,  that  is  to  say,  to  make  the  secession 
of  the  South  a  measure  of  self-defense  against 
the  abolition  encroachments  and  crusades  of 
the  North.  In  the  time  of  Mr.  Pierce  the  plan 
became  offensive,  that  is  to  say,  to  commence 
the  expansion  of  slavery,  and  the  acquisition  of 
territory  to  spread  it  over,  so  as  to  overpower 
the  North  with  new  Slave  States,  and  drive 
them  out  of  the  Union.  .  .  .  The  rising  in 
the  Free  States,  in  consequence  of  the  abroga 
tion  of  the  Missouri  Compromise,  checked  these 
schemes,  and  limited  the  success  of .  the  dis- 
unionists  to  the  revival  of  the  agitation  which 
enables  them  to  wield  the  South  against  the 
North  in  all  the  federal  elections  and  all  fed 
eral  legislation.  Accidents  and  events  have 
given  the  party  a  strange  preeminence,  —  under 
Jackson's  administration  proclaimed  for  trea- 


360  THOMAS  HART  BEN  TON. 

son  ;  since  at  the  head  of  the  government  and 
of  the  Democratic  party.  The  death  of  Harri 
son,  and  the  accession  of  Tyler,  was  their  first 
great  lift ;  the  election  of  Mr.  Pierce  was  their 
culminating  point."  This  was  the  last  protest 
of  the  last  of  the  old  Jacksonian  leaders  against 
that  new  generation  of  Democrats,  whose  de 
light  it  had  become  to  bow  down  to  strange 
gods. 

In  his  private  life  Benton's  relations  were  of 
the  pleasantest.  He  was  a  religious  man,  al 
though,  like  his  great  political  chief,  he  could 
on  occasions  swear  roundly.  He  was  rigidly 
moral,  and  he  was  too  fond  of  work  ever  to 
make  social  life  a  business.  But  he  liked  small 
dinners,  with  just  a  few  intimate  friends  or 
noted  and  brilliant  public  men,  and  always 
shone  at  such  an  entertainment.  Although  he 
had  not  traveled  much,  he  gave  the  impression 
of  having  done  so,  by  reason  of  his  wide  read 
ing,  and  because  he  always  made  a  point  of 
knowing  all  explorers,  especially  those  who  had 
penetrated  our  great  western  wilds.  His  geo 
graphical  knowledge  was  wonderful ;  and  his 
good  nature,  as  well  as  his  delight  in  work 
for  work's  sake,  made  him  of  more  use  than 
any  library  of  reference,  if  his  friends  needed 
information  upon  some  abstruse  matter, — Web 
ster  himself  acknowledging  his  indebtedness  to 


THE  LOSING  FIGHT.  361 

him  on  one  occasion,  and  being  the  authority 
for  the  statement  that  Benton  knew  more  polit 
ical  facts  than  any  other  man  he  had  ever  met, 
even  than  John  Quincy  Adams,  and  possessed 
a  wonderful  fund  of  general  knowledge.  Al 
though  very  gentle  in  his  dealings  with  those 
for  whom  he  cared,  Benton  originally  was  rather 
quarrelsome  and  revengeful  in  character.  His 
personal  and  political  prejudices  were  bitter, 
and  he  denounced  his  enemies  freely  in  public 
and  from  the  stump ;  yet  he  always  declined 
to  take  part  in  joint  political  debates,  -on  ac 
count  of  the  personal  discourtesy  with  which 
they  were  usually  conducted.  He  gave  his 
whole  time  to  public  life,  rarely  or  never  at 
tending  to  his  law  practice  after  he  had  fairly 
entered  the  political  field. 

Benton  was  one  of  those  who  were  present 
and  escaped  death  at  the  time  of  the  terri 
ble  accident  on  board  the  Princeton,  during 
Tyler's  administration,  when  the  bursting  of 
her  great  gun  killed  so  many  prominent  men. 
Benton  was  saved  owing  to  the  fact  that,  char 
acteristically  enough,  he  had  stepped  to  one 
side  the  better  to  note  the  marksmanship  of 
the  gunner.  Ex-Governor  Gilmer,  of  Virginia, 
who  had  taken  his  place,  was  instantly  killed. 
Tyler,  who  was  also  on  board,  was  likewise 
saved  in  consequence  of  the  exhibition  of  a 


362        THOMAS  HART  BENTON. 

characteristic  trait ;  for,  just  as  the  gun  was 
about  to  be  fired,  something  occurred  in  an 
other  part  of  the  ship  which  distracted  the 
attention  of  the  fussy,  fidgety  president,  who 
accordingly  ran  off  to  see  what  it  was,  and 
thus  escaped  the  fatal  explosion.  The  tragic 
nature  of  the  accident  and  his  own  narrow  es 
cape  made  a  deep  impression  upon  Benton;  and 
it  was  noticed  that  ever  afterwards  he  was  far 
more  forbearing  and  forgiving  than  of  old.  He 
became  good  friends  with  Webster  and  other 
political  opponents,  with  whom  he  had  for 
merly  hardly  been  on  speaking  terms.  Cul- 
houn  alone  he  would  never  forgive.  It  was  not 
in  his  nature  to  do  anything  by  halves  ;  and 
accordingly,  when  he  once  forgave  an  oppo 
nent,  he  could  not  do  enough  to  show  him  that 
the  forgiveness  was  real.  A  Missourian  named 
Wilson,  who  had  been  his  bitter  and  malignant 
political  foe  for  years,  finally  becoming  broken 
in  fortune  and  desirous  of  bettering  himself  by 
going  to  California,  where  Benton's  influence, 
through  his  son-in-law,  Fremont,  was  supreme, 
was  persuaded  by  Webster  to  throw  himself 
on  the  generosity  of  his  old  enemy.  The  lat 
ter  not  only  met  him  half-way,  but  helped 
him  with  a  lavish  kindness  that  would  hardly 
have  been  warranted  by  less  than  a  life-long 
friendship.  Webster  has  left  on  record  the 


TEE  LOSING  FIGHT.  363 

fact  that,  when  once  they  had  come  to  be  on 
good  terms  with  each  other,  there  was  no  man 
in  the  whole  Senate  of  whom  he  would  more 
freely  have  asked  any  favor  that  could  prop 
erly  be  granted. 

He  was  a  most  loving  father.    At  his  death 
he  left  four  surviving  daughters,  —  Mrs.  Wjl-         '  7  J 
liam  Carey  Jones,  Mrs.  Sarah  Benton  Jacobs, 

*  — —    '  7      C/VY        ¥V-( 

Madame  Susan  Benton  Boilleau,  and  Mrs.  Jes 
sie  Ann  Benton  Fremont,  the  wife  of  the  great 
explorer,  whose  wonderful  feats  and  adven 
tures,  ending  with  the  conquest  of  California, 
where  he  became  a  sort  of  viceroy  in  point  of 
power,  made  him  an  especial  favorite  with  his 
father-in-law,  who  loved  daring  and  hardihood. 
Benton  took  the  keenest  delight  in  Fremont's 
remarkable  successes,  and  was  never  tired  of 
talking  of  them,  both  within  and  without  the 
Senate.  He  records  with  very  natural  pride  the 
fact  that  it  was  only  the  courage  and  judgment 
displayed  in  a  trying  crisis  by  his  own  gifted 
daughter,  Fremont's  wife,  which  enabled  the 
adventurous  young  explorer  to  prosecute  one 
of  the  most  important  of  his  expeditions,  when 
threatened  with  fatal  interference  from  jealous 
governmental  superiors. 

He  was  an  exceptionally  devoted  husband. 
His  wife  was  Miss  Elizabeth  McDowell,  of  Vir 
ginia,  whom  he  married  after  he  had  entered 


364  THOMAS  HART  BEN  TON. 

the  Senate.  Their  life  was  most  happy  until 
1844,  when  she  was  struck  by  paralysis.  From 
that  time  till  her  death  in  1854,  he  never  went 
out  to  a  public  place  of  amusement,  spending 
all  his  time  not  occupied  with  public  duties  in 
writing  by  her  bedside.  It  is  scant  praise  to 
say  that,  while  mere  acquiescence  on  his  part 
would  have  enabled  him  to  become  rich  through 
government  influence,  he  nevertheless  died  a 
poor  man.  In  public,  as  in  private  life,  he  was 
a  man  of  sensitive  purity  of  character ;  he  would 
never  permit  any  person  connected  with  him 
by  blood  or  marriage  to  accept  office  under  the 
government,  nor  would  he  ever  favor  any  ap 
plicant  for  a  government  contract  on  political 
grounds. 

During  his  last  years,  when  his  sturdy  inde 
pendence  and  devotion  to  the  Union  had  caused 
him  the  loss  of  his  political  influence  in  his 
own  state  and  with  his  own  party,  he  never 
theless  stood  higher  with  the  country  at  largo 
than  ever  before.  He  was  a  faithful  friend 
and  a  bitter  foe  ;  he  was  vain,  proud,  utterly 
fearless,  and  quite  unable  to  comprehend  such 
emotions  as  are  expressed  by  the  terms  de 
spondency  and  yielding.  Without  being  a  great 
orator  or  writer,  or  even  an  original  thinker,  he 
yet  possessed  marked  ability  ;  and  his  abound 
ing  vitality  and  marvelous  memory,  his  mdoin- 


THE  LOSING  FIGHT.  365 

itable  energy  and  industry,  and  his  tenacious 
persistency  and  personal  courage,  all  combined 
to  give  him  a  position  and  influence  such  as 
few  American  statesmen  have  ever  held.  His 
character  grew  steadily  to  the  very  last ;  he 
made  better  speeches  and  was  better  able  to 
face  new  problems  when  past  three  score  and 
ten  than  in  his  early  youth  or  middle  age.  He 
possessed  a  rich  fund  of  political,  legal,  and  his 
torical  learning,  and  every  subject  that  he  ever 
handled  showed  the  traces  of  careful  and  thor 
ough  study.  He  was  very  courteous,  except 
when  provoked ;  his  courage  was  proof  against 
all  fear,  and  he  shrank  from  no  contest,  per 
sonal  or  political.  He  was  sometimes  narrow- 
minded,  and  always  wilful  and  passionate ;  but 
he  was  honest  and  truthful.  At  all  times  and 
in  all  places  he  held  every  good  gift  he  had 
completely  at  the  service  of  the  American  Fed 
eral  Union. 


INDEX. 


ADAMS,  JOHN  QUIXCY  :  in  presiden 
tial  election  of  1324-5,  59-61; 
makes  Clay  secretary  of  state,  61 ; 
and  is  assailed  therefor,  62  ;  out 
lines  Whig  policy  in  his  inaugural, 
63;  on  the  Panama  mission,  64; 
in  election  of  1823,  69  ;  preserves 
purity  of  civil  service,  81 ;  on  rec 
ognition  of  Texas,  180. 

"  Albany  Regency,"  the,  adopts 
"  spoils  system,"  81. 

Arnold,  Benedict :  compared  with 
Burr  and  J.  Davis,  163. 

Atchison,  protests  against  admission 
of  California,  338. 

Benton,  town  of,  founded,  25. 

Benton,  Thomas  Hart :  —  local  char 
acter  of  his  statesmanship,  13; 
birth,  23  ;  boyhood  and  education, 
24  et  seq. ;  religious  training,  26  ; 
fights  a  duel,  27 ;  affray  with 
Jackson,  28  ;  admitted  to  the  I 
bar,  29  ;  in  legislature  of  Tennss-  \ 
see,  29  ;  on  the  Hartford  Conven 
tion,  31 ;  a  slaveholder,  31 ;  fa 
vors  war  of  1812, 32  ,  in  service,  32 ; 
befriends  Jackson,  32 ;  associa 
tions  in  Tenue3S83, 33  et  seq. ;  some 
traits  of  character,  34  ;  settles  in 
Missouri,  35 ;  surroundings  and 
influences  there,  40 ;  speech  on 
treaty  with  Spain  concerning  Flor 
ida,  41 ;  first  position  concerning 
slavery,  43 ;  enters  U.  S.  Senate, 
44;  honorable  financial  sacrifice, 
45 ;  position  on  the  Oregon  ques 
tion,  50-53,  65,  263-270,  273-279, 
281-2S9;  bill  to  establish  a  trading 
road  through  Missouri,  53  ;  on  the 
removal  of  the  Indians,  55 ;  votes 
for  Clay's  protective  tariff  bill, 
53  ;  opposes  internal  improve 


ments  and  Cumberland  Road  bill, 
58 ;  condemns  election  of  John  Q. 
Adams  to  Presidency,  60  ;  sup 
ports  Clay,  then  Jackson,  61  ;  will 
not  join  outcry  against  Adams  and 
Clay,  61 ;  a  leader  of  the  opposi 
tion  to  Adams  in  the  Senate,  63  ; 
represents  ultra-Southern  feeling 
concerning  revolted  Spanish  col 
onies,  65 ;  vote  on  the  protective 
tariff  of  1823,  66,  91.  102  ;  efforts 
concerning  disposal  of  public  land, 
63,  77,  149,  154,  217  ;  hostility  to 
the  Northeastern  States,  76;  in 
the  Webster-Hayne  debate,  78; 
opposes  Jackson's  '•  spoils  sys 
tem,"  79-85 ;  leader  of  the  Jack- 
sonians  in  the  Senate,  85,  86; 
shows  that  protective  tariff  has 
not  helped  the  West,  91  ;  urges 
repeal  of  the  tax  on  salt,  92,  227  ; 
vigorously  sustains  Jackson  in  the 
nullification  froubles,  100-105; 
sustains  the  Force  bill,  105 ;  op 
poses  Clay's  compromise  measure, 
107-109 ;  remarks  on  his  posi 
tion  at  this  period,  112  ;  campaign 
against  the  Bank  of  the  United 
States,  114,  130,  13tf,  143  ;  speech 
on  the  currency,  122,  136-133, 253  ; 
conflict  with  Clay,  129  ;  on  the  re 
moval  of  the  deposits,  131 ;  op 
poses  the  resolution  of  censure 
against  Jackson,  133  ;  and  pushes 
through  his  own  expunging  reso 
lution,  134-136,  139-142;  advo 
cates  establishment  of  mints  at 
the  South,  144;  opposes  distribu 
tion  of  surplus,  145,  149 ;  wishes 
it  used  for  fortifications,  146, 150- 
153  ;  advocates  insisting  on  our 
claims  against  France,  147  ;  but 
opposes  paying  claims  of  Ameri- 


368 


INDEX. 


can  citizens,  148  ;  opposes  the  so- 
called  specie  circulars,  154  ;  views 
concerning  Southern  slavery  poli 
ticians,  162  ;  opposed  to  the  Aboli 
tionists,  165 ;   criticises  Calhoun, 
167,  1G8  ;  aids  to  defeat  bill  pro 
hibiting   circulation   of   abolition 
documents  through  U.  S.  mails, 
1G9  ;  carries  bill  extending  bound 
aries  of  Missouri,  170 ;  urges  ad 
mission  of  Michigan,  171 ;  carries 
through  treaty  with   Cherokees, 
171 ;  defends  governmental  treat 
ment  of  Indians,  172  ;  condemns 
treaty  establishing  Southwestern 
boundary,  175 ;  position  concern 
ing  annexation  of  Texas,  180-183  ; 
hostility  to   separatist  doctrines, 
188 ;   blames  bankers  and  politi 
cians  for  financial  crisis  of  1837,  : 
190,  194;  his  forebodings  of  this  ' 
trouble,  191-193  ;  demeanor  in  the 
crisis,    197 ;     supports    issue    of  \ 
Treasury  notes,  198  ;  opposes  pay-  ; 
ment   of   further  installment    of 
surplus,  199  ;  supports  scheme  for 
independent  Treasury,  200,  207  ; 
action  concerning  resumption  by 
bonds,  203  ;  a  supporter  of  the  ad-  j 
ministration  in  these  tunes,  263  ;  : 
liis   knowledge,   204 ;    hostile   to  j 
paper  currency,  20G  ;  defends  ad 
ministration  in  matters  of  Semi-  | 
nole  war,  212  ;  theory  for  conduct-  ! 
ing    this    war,     215 ;     advocates  } 
homestead  law,  217  ;  opposes  as-  \ 
sumption   of   State   debts  by  na-  j 
tional  government,  220;  explains  i 
greater   rapidity   of   progress    at  I 
North  than  at  South,  222  ;  on  the 
tariff  of   1833,    224-230 ;   defends  j 
Jackson  and  Van  Buren  against 
charges    of    squandering    public 
moneys,    230 ;     in    the    Harrison 
campaign,  233  ;  holds  the  Demo 
crats  for  the  Union,  234 ;  feeling 
concerning    slavery    about    Van  | 
Buren's  time,  235 ;  leads  the  Demo-  : 
crats  in  struggle  between  Presi 
dent  Tyler  and  Clay,  240-244  ;  ex-  i 
alts  the  "  Democratic  idea,"  241 ;  ; 
comments  on  Tyler's  first  message  j 
to    Congress,   245 ;    opposes  sub- 
Treasury  bill,  24G  ;  also  the  bank, 
distribution  and  bankruptcy  bills, 
246-249 ;   opposes  the  hour  limit  : 
for  speeches  in  the  Senate,  250-  | 
252 ;   speech  concerning  the  dis-  j 
trict  banks  and  the  currency,  253  ; 


opposes  effort  to  establish  a  na 
tional  bank  during  Tyler's  admin 
istration,  255-258 ;  opposes  new 
form  of  Treasury  notes,  258 ;  op 
poses  subsidizing  steamship  lines, 
258  ;  also  the  abuse  of  the  pen 
sion  system,  258  ;  always  an  advo 
cate  of  extending  the  national 
boundaries,  263,  267  ;  opposes  the 
Ashburton  treaty,  269,  273-279; 
remarks  concerning  the  Caroline 
imbroglio,  270 ;  opposes  making 
an  efficient  navy,  272  ;  references 
to  slavery  in  speeches  on  the  Ash- 
burton  treaty,  274,  280  ;  on  the 
Oregon  question,  281-289 ;  posi 
tion  concerning  annexation  of 
Texas  in  time  of  Polk,  299-317  ; 
opposes  the  South,  301  ;  opposes 
Calhoun's  treaty,  306-310  ;  hood 
winked  by  the  annexationists,  313  ; 
attacks  Calhoun  and  opposes  the 
Mexican  war,  315 ;  ottered  the 
command  of  the  army,  318 ; 
awakes  to  importance  of  slavery 
question,  318 ;  his  later  position 
concerning  it,  320,  333-336  ;  con 
tests  with  pro-slavery  Senators, 
322,  323  ;  opposes  Calhoun  as  to 
power  of  Congress  over  slavery 
in  territories,  323-327  ;  and  as  to 
admission  of  Oregon,  328 ;  criti 
cises  Folk's  administration,  328 ; 
visits  New  York  in  presidential 
campaign  in  1848,  329 ;  de 
fends  Taylor's  message,  331  ; 
opposes  Clay's  compromise,  332, 
333-336  ;  more  antagonism  to 
wards  Calhoun,  333 ;  position  on 
the  Wilmot  Proviso,  336  ;  advo 
cates  admission  of  California  as  a 
Free  State,  337  ;  refuses  to  sup 
port  Fugitive  Slave  .  Act,  339  ; 
nickname  of  "  Old  Bullion,"  342; 
opposition  to  him  in  Missouri, 
342  ;  defeated,  343  ;  goes  to  House 
of  Representatives,  343;  begins 
work  on  the  "  Thirty  Years' 
View, ''344;  supports  Pierce  for 
Presidency,  344 ;  but  later  goes 
into  opposition,  345;  supports 
scheme  for  Pacific  Railroad,  346  ; 
discusses  the  Indian  policy,  347  ; 
speeches  on  land-bounty  and  pen 
sion  bills,  348;  opposes  Kansas- 
Nebraska  bill,  349-352  ;  discusses 
historically  the  Missouri  Com 
promise,  349  ;  ridicules  squatter 
sovereignty,  350;  opposes  the 


INDEX. 


369 


Gladstone  treaty,  352 ;    view    of  ! 
Southern   disunion  scheme,   352  ;  | 
again  defeated   in  Missouri  elec 
tions,   353  ;   returns  to  labor  on  I 
"  Thirty  Years'  View,"  354  ;  votes  | 
for  Buchanan,  354  ;  candidate  for  j 
governorship,    354 ;     stumps    the  ! 
State,  354  ;  respected  at  the  North,  j 
355  ;   prepares  his   "  Abridgment  ! 
of  the  Debates  of  Congress,"  35G  ; 
death,  35C ;  value  of  his  works  357  ;  ; 
criticism  of  the  Dred  Scott  case,  i 
358 ;  and  of  the  new  Democratic  j 
theories,  353  ;  domestic  relations,  j 
360  ;  extensive   knowledge,   3GO ;  , 
on  board  the  Princeton  at  time  of 
explosion  of  great  gun,  3G1 ;   gen 
erous  temper,  3G2. 

Biddle,  Nicholas  :  president  of  Bank  j 
of  United  States,  116 :  his  er-  | 
rors,  124  ;  his  bank  goes  to  pieces,  • 
208. 

Birney,  James  G.  :  abolitionist  can-  | 
didate  for  Presidency,  291,  292  ;  ! 
folly  of  nominating  him,  293,  294,  I 
310. 

Blair,  .Francis  C.,  displaced,  317. 

Buchanan,  James  :  on  annexation  of 
Texas,  310  ;  Benton  votes  for  him,  , 
354. 

Burr,    Aaron  :   introduces  "  spoils  : 
system"'  in  New  York,  81 ;  com-  ' 
pared     with     Benedict     Arnold, 
163. 

Calhouu,   John   C.  :   rupture    with 
Jackson,   resignation  from  Vice- 
Presidency,  86 ;  position  concern 
ing  tariff  in  1816,  89 ;  position  as 
a  nullifier,  96  ;  introduces  nullifi 
cation    resolutions,    103;   threat 
ened  with  hanging,  104 ;  arranges 
compromise  with  Clay,  106 ;  sub 
sequent  quarrel  with    Clay   con 
cerning  this,  110  ;  his  purposes  at  j 
this   time,   111 ;  assails  Jackson,  ' 
132;   opposes  "Webster's  bill  for 
rechartering    bank,   133;   on  the 
expunging  resolution,   141 ;   pro-  i 
poses    constitutional  amendment  i 
for  distribution  of  Treasury  sur 
plus,  144 ;  opposes  appropriating  j 
Treasury  surplus  for  fortifications, 
146 ;  attack  on  President  Pierce,  i 
166 ;    his    honesty,   168 ;   on  ad-  j 
mission  of  Texas  180 ;  in  connec-  j 
tion   with  trouble   with  Mexico, 
260 ;     on    the   Oregon    question, 
285  ;   instrumental  in  election  of 

24 


Polk,  292;  letter  to  Lord  Aber 
deen,  300  ;  assailed  by  Benton  as 
to  annexation  of  Texas,  307,  309  ; 
action  as  to  legislation  about 
Texas,  313 ;  relations  as  to  Mex 
ican  war,  314 ;  and  the  Wilmot 
Proviso,  323-;  resolution  as  to 
power  of  Congress  over  slavery 
in  the  territories,  323-326;  not 
a  "  Union  man,"  326  ;  on  the  ad 
mission  of  Oregon,  326,  327,  328 ; 
dislikes  Taylor's  message  to  Con 
gress,  331. 

California,  admission  of,  337. 

Caroline,  affair  of  the,  270. 

Cartwright,  Peter,  33. 

Cass,  Lewis:  nominated  for  Presi 
dency,  329. 

Cherokees,  treaty  for  their  removal, 

Clay,  Henry:  introduces  his  first 
tariff  bill,  58;  secretary  of  state 
under  Adams,  61 ;  assailed  there 
for,  and  fights  Randolph,  62 ;  de 
vises  the  Panama  mission,  63 ; 
leader  of  National  Republican 
or  Whig  party,  86;  defies  "the 
South,  the  President,  and  the 
devil,"  90 ;  erroneous  statement 
as  to  effect  of  tariff  in  the  West, 
91 ;  angers  the  uullifiers,  99 ;  de 
feated  in  presidential  election  in 
1832,  100 ;  alarmed  at  position  of 
Calhoun,  106 ;  and  prepares  com 
promise,  106 ;  afterward  quarrels 
about  it  with  Calhoun,  110 ;  be 
friends  Bank  of  the  United  States, 
124,  127,  129  ;  effect  on  his  po 
litical  fortunes,  125  ;  introduces 
resolution  for  return  of  depos 
its,  131 ;  also  for  censuring  Pres 
ident  Jackson,  132  ;  opposes  Web 
ster's  bill  for  rechartering  Bank, 
136 ;  on  the  expunging  resolution, 
141  ;  opposes  establishment  of 
mints  at  the  South,  144  ;  also  ap 
propriating  surplus  for  fortifica 
tions,  146  ;  in  financial  crisis  of 
1837,  200;  on  the  sub-Treasury 
bill,  201,  205 ;  on  resumption, 
202,  203 ;  opposes  payment  of 
state  debts  by  national  govern 
ment,  221 ;  prepares  financial 
measures  upon  Tyler's  accession, 
240,  244 ;  construction  of  a  presi 
dential  election,  241 ;  programme 
for  legislation  under  Tyler,  ^45  ; 
attempts  to  introduce  hour-lim 
its  for  speeches  in  Senate,  250- 


370 


INDEX. 


252  ;  lectures  Tyler  in  the  Bank 
debate,  250;  defeated  by  Polk, 
290 ;  causes  thereof,  310  ;  attacks 
Taylor's  message  to  Congress, 
331 ;  proposes  compromise  of  sla 
very  controversy,  331  ;  defeated 
by  Benton,  330  ;  compared  with 
Benton,  339. 

Crawford,  William  H.  :  adopts  the 
"spoils  system,"  80. 

Crockett,  David,  27,  33  ;  berates 
Jackson,  113. 

Cumberland  Road,  Benton  votes 
against  bill  for,  58. 

Davis,  Jefferson :  compared  with 
Benedict  Arnold,  1C3  ;  a  repudia- 
tor,  220  ;  and  Cnlhoun's  resolution 
as  to  slavery  in  the  territories, 
325  ;  protests  against  admission  of 
California,  333. 

Drayton,  family,  loyalty  of  the  fam 
ily  in  South  Carolina,  9G. 

Florida,  the  treaty  securing  it  to  the 
United  States,  41. 

Foote,  Senator  from  Mississippi,  op 
position  to  his  public  land  scheme 
by  Benton  and  Webster,  77. 

Fremont,  John  C.  :  explores  Rocky 
Mountains,  283  ;  Benton  will  not 
vote  for,  354  ;  Benton's  interest  in 
his  explorations,  3C3. 

Giddings,  Joshua  R.,  sound  policy 
of,  294. 

Harrison,  Wm.  Henry  :  election  not 
affected  by  slavery  question,  235  ; 
death  and  character,  237. 

Hartford  Convention,  criticised  by 
Benton,  31,  78  ;  causes  of,  49. 

Houston,  Samuel,  34  :  wins  victory 
of  San  Jacinto,  180 ;  hates  Van 
Buren,  188  ;  description  of,  327  : 
votes  to  admit  California,  338. 

Indian  tribes,  Benton  on  the  re 
moval  of,  55  ;  criticism  on  treat 
ment  of,  57,  172,  347  :  removal  of 
Cherokees  in  1830,  171. 

Jackson.  Andrew  :  affray  with  Ben- 
ton,  28  ;  befriended  by  Benton  at 
Washington,  32  ;  in  presidential 
election  of  1824,  29,  00  ;  incensed 
against  Adams  and  Clay,  01  ;  suc 
cess  in  election  of  1828,  59  ;  char 
acter  of  his  following,  71,  74,  75; 


his  opponents,  72 ;  his  victory 
compared  with  Jefferson's,  73  ; 
compared  with  Wellington,  73 ; 
foster-father  of  the  "spoils  sys 
tem,''  79,  82 ;  inferior  character 
of  his  cabinet,  8G;  relations  of 
his  followers  with  those  of  Clay 
and  Calhoun,  80  ;  struggles  with 
the  Bank  and  the  nullifiers,  88; 
expected  to  support  nullification, 
9f> ;  but  does  not,  97  ;  repudiates 
Calhoun  and  adopts  Van  Buren, 
97  ;  at  the  Jefferson  birthday  ban 
quet,  98 ;  again  defines  his  posi 
tion,  99 ;  signs  new  tariff  bill,  99  ; 
reflected  in  1832,  100  ;  issues 
proclamation  against  nullification, 

101  ;    special    message  on    nulli 
fication,   102 ;    opinion  on   tariff, 

102  ;  threatens  to  hang  Calhoun, 
104 ;    signs     "  force     bill,"    also 
Clay's  compromise  bill,  108  ;   be 
haves  badly  in  case  of  Georgia, 
112;  attack  on  U.   S.  Bank,  114 
et  seq.  ;  reasons  of  his  political 
success,    110 ;  opposes  r;?-chartor 
of  Bank  in  message  of  1829,  117  ; 
vetoes  bill  for  re -charter,  127  ;  re- 
elected,    130  ;    removes    the    de 
posits,  130  ;  protests  against  Clay's 
resolution   of  censure,  133 ;   con 
tinued  assaults  on  the  Bank,  139  ; 
gives  a  dinner  to  the  expungcrs, 
141  ;    signs  bill    for    distributing 
Treasury     surplus,    153  ;    issues 
Treasury  order   concerning  pay 
ments     for    public     lands,    155 ; 
Kitchen  Cabinet    and  "  machine 
politics,"  184,  185 ;  liking  for  Van 
Buren,  180  ;  his  nationalism,  234 ; 
praised  by  Benton    for   hanging 
Arbuthnot  and  Ambrister,   272  ; 
favors  annexation  of  Texas,  298 ; 
and  Van  Buren,  299. 

!  Jefferson,  Thomas  :  character  of  his 
following,  70,  71  ;  his  victory  com 
pared  with  Jackson's,  73 ;  his 
pseudo-classicism,  92  ;  quoted  as 
authority  for  nullification,  95  ; 
celebration  of  birthday  of,  97. 

Lee,  Robert  E.  :  military  standing 
of,  38. 

Lincoln,  Abraham  :  services  in  anti- 
slavery  cause,  159. 

Livingston,  Edward  :  aids  in  prepar 
ing  proclamation  against  nullifi 
cation,  101. 

Lucas,  Benton's  duel  with,  28. 


INDEX. 


371 


Madison,  James,  quoted,  163. 

Marcy,  Win.  L.,  adopts  "spoils  sys 
tem,"  81 ;  cringes  to  the  South, 
108. 

McDuffie,  passage  at  arms  with  Ben- 
ton,  304,  305  ;  deceives  Benton  as 
to  taxes,  313. 

McLeod,  Alexander,  case  of,  271. 

Missouri,  character  of  its  popula 
tion,  39  ;  admission  to  the  Union, 
43,  47  ;  land  titles  in,  45. 

Missouri  Compromise  bill,  43 ;  not 
the  beginning  of  the  slavery  and 
anti-slavery  divisions  in  the  Union, 
48  ;  Benton  concerning  repeal  of, 
349. 

Monroe,  James,  remarks,  47,  58,  59  ; 
signs  bill  for  trading  road,  53. 

New  Orleans,  Benton's  astonishing 
description  of,  93. 

Oregon,  disputed  between  Great 
Britain  and  the  United  States, 
50 ;  Benton's  remarks  concerning, 
51 ;  comes  into  notice  again  in 
J.  Q.  Adams's  term,  65;  final  set 
tlement  of  the  matter,  200-273  ; 
neglected  in  Ashburton  treaty, 
278,  and  by  Calhoun,  278,  and 
others,  279  ;  Benton's  feeling 
about,  281,  284;  bill  for  settle 
ment  of,  284  ;  Calhoun  on  the  ad 
mission  of,  32G-328. 

Panama  mission,  disputes  concern 
ing,  63-65. 

Phillips,  Wendell,  estimate  of,  1GO. 

Pierce,  Franklin,  assailed  by  Cal 
houn,  1G6 ;  relations  with  Ben- 
ton,  344,  345  ;  a  valuation  of, 
345 ;  Benton  upon  pro-slavery 
tenJencies  of,  359. 

Polk,  James  K.,  character  of  his 
following,  234;  and  the  South 
western  boundary,  287  ;  elected 
President,  290,  3lO  ;  estimate  of, 
292  ;  deceives  Benton  as  to  Texas, 
313 ;  displaces  Blair,  317  ;  rela 
tions  with  various  portions  of 
Democratic  party,  317,  318. 

Randolph,  John  :  duel  with  Clay,  G2. 
Rynders,  Isaiah,  a  type,  291,  292. 

Samiuoles,  war  with,  209-216. 

Taney,  Roger  B.,  removes  the  de 
posits,  130  ;  afterward  made  chief 


|      justice,  131 ;  criticised  by  Benton 
for  his  opinion  in  Dred  Scott  case. 

I      358. 

Taylor,  Zachary,  elected  President, 
329  ;  character,  330, 337  ;  message 
to  Congress,  331  ;  dies,  337. 
Tyler,  John,  opposes  "  Force  Bill," 
105 ;  estimate  of,  on  his  acces 
sion,  237  ;  his  political  affiliations, 
238-240;  first  message  to  Con 
gress,  245 ;  conduct  concerning 
bill  for  establishing  a  bank,  254- 
257 ;  his  cabinet  resigns,  257 ; 
identifies  liimself  with  the  sep 
aratist  Democrats,  298  ;  schemes 
for  annexation  of  Texas,  300,  306  ; 
assailed  by  Benton,  307,  309  ;  be 
havior  at  time  of  explosion  of 
gun  on  board  the  Princeton,  361. 


I  Van  Buren,  Martin,  supports  Craw 
ford  for  Presidency  in  1824, 
61  ;  adopts  "  spoils  system,"  81 ; 
adopted  by  Jackson  as  his  heir, 
97  ;  Vice- President,  100 ;  product 
of  "  machine  politics,"  184  ;  be 
friended  by  Jackson,  186  ;  sketch 
of,  and  causes  of  his  elevation, 
186-188 ;  his  inaugural,  188  ;  finan 
cial  crisis  and  Ins  doings  therein, 
189'  et  seq.,  194,  196,  197;  finan 
cial  measures,  200  ;  has  to  deal 
with  the  Semincles,  209;  public 
dishonesty  under,  219 ;  charged 
with  squandering  the  public 
money,  230;  significance  of  his 
defeat,  234  ;  slavery  question  did 
not  arise  in  his  administration, 
235  ;  champion  of  old-style  Union 
Democrats,  and  opposed  to  an 
nexation  of  Texas,  298  ;  candidate 
for  Presidency.  299,  310  ;  and  the 
Free  Soil  party,  329. 

War  of  1812,  a  cause  of  the,  7 ; 
political  influence  on  Benton,  30. 

Warsaw,  social  habits  of  the  town, 
36. 

Webster,  Daniel,  position  of,  con 
cerning  Clay's  first  tariff  bill, 
58  ;  position  on  the  tariff  ques 
tion  in  1828,  67;  in  the  debate 
on  Foote's  resolution  concerning 
sales  of  public  land,  77,  97  ;  leader 
of  National  Republican,  or  Whig, 
party,  86  ;  aids  Jackson  in  nulli 
fication  troubles,  103,  104  ;  ad 
vocates  the  "force  bill,"  105;  res 
olute  in  opposition  to  the  South, 


372 


INDEX. 


IOC,  107,  108;    remarks  as  to  his  | 
services,   111 ;   befriends  Bank  of  i 
United  States,  124,  126,  127,  129  ;  j 
personal  relations  with  the  Jack-  j 
sonians,  131 ;    introduces  bill  for 
re-charter  of  Bank,  130;   on  the 
expunging    resolution,   142  ;  sup- 
ports   establishment  of  mints   at 
the    South,  144;    opposes  appro 
priating  Treasury  surplus  for  for 
tifications,  14G  ;  in  financial  crisis 
of    1837,    200 ;    on    sub-Treasury 
scheme,  201,    205 ;   opposes  pay 
ment  of  state   debt   by  national 
government,  221  ;  remains  in  Ty 
ler's  cabinet,  257 ;  negotiates  treaty 
with    England,    settling    bound 
aries  between  United  States  and 


British  possessions,  260,  2G2,  2GS ; 
criticised  by  Beaton,  273-277,  2SO  ; 
neglects  Oregon  controversy,  278 ; 
compared  with  Beaton  on  the 
slavery  question,  320,  339 ;  com 
pliments  Beaton's  knowledge,  360 ; 
on  friendly  terms  with  Beaton, 
362. 

Wellington,  Duke  of,  compared 
with  Washington  and  Jackson, 
73. 

Wilmot  Proviso,  Benton's  remarks 
upon,  323,  33(5. 

Wright,  Silas,  adopts  "  spoils  sys 
tem,"  81 ;  expresses  the  "  dough 
face  "  sentiment  at  time  of  nulli 
fication  troubles,  107. 


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